


Love Bright as the Sun

by Lauren_StDavid



Series: Beechwood [2]
Category: The Monkees, The Monkees (TV)
Genre: Characters from other episodes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Light Angst, Light BDSM, M/M, Mild Blood, Original Character(s), Shower Sex, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-06-16 05:31:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 46,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15430038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauren_StDavid/pseuds/Lauren_StDavid
Summary: How Peter and Mike’s deep, supportive friendship turned into an intimate relationship—but not without a few hiccups along the way…Huge thanks to the Sunshine Factory website https://monkees.coolcherrycream.com/ for all the fantastic info and pictures! I couldn't have written any of these fics without that lovely treasure trove to mine.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Elements of their rl personalities have seeped in.

Mike heaved himself up from the couch and changed the channel again, only to scowl at the TV screen. Again. “If any one of those airheads says, ‘It's got a good beat and you can dance to it,’ I’ll…” Muttering, he dropped back onto the couch, brushing Peter’s knee with his head as he sat. As he could have predicted, within a few seconds, Peter, perched in the lotus position above him on the back of the couch, acoustic in hand, was picking out the song Dick Clark had just introduced and that two mini-skirted teenage girls were rating. That was at least bearable, but within minutes, the commercials came on.

With another grumble, Mike levered himself up. No point trying the other two channels again—only local news and sports and he didn’t feel like either. He turned off the set and sat yet again, and this time Pete’s knee stroked Mike’s temple. Which kinda made the journey worthwhile. Was better than anything on TV, anyhow.

“You should have switched on earlier for the cartoons,” Peter said.

Mike gave Peter a sideways glance. “Don’t feel like cartoons.” _Micky_ watched Saturday morning cartoons.

“Put on a record,” Peter said, not stopping his improvising. He couldn’t hold an instrument without playing it.

“In a minute, buddy. I’m sorta okay with this.”

“Hmm?” Peter looked up.

“This silence,” Mike gabbled. “ _This_ silence.” _This_ with a wave of his hand to show he meant the pad, empty then except for the pair of them.

And he was. He kinda liked when things were just him and Peter. He liked how Peter was quieter then, as was he. Without their roommates, Mike didn’t need to keep order or organize, and Peter didn’t need to smooth things or lighten things or defuse things, or whatever. They could just _be_. Be real.

“Mmmm.”

Peter’s reply meant vague agreement, but the sound hung, a murmur throbbing in the still of the summer afternoon, thrumming through Mike. He half stood, thinking to give the TV another chance, but he sat again, getting in another rub against Peter’s knee.

“You’re…I don’t know.” Peter tilted his head, eyes narrowed and fingers stilling on the strings. “Sure you haven’t been body swapped with Micky?”

“I guess that’s a little joke, about _this_ big?” Mike automatically took the guitar Peter passed him and Peter sank down to occupy the far end of the couch, meaning Mike pushed himself against his arm of the sofa, his legs stretched out. Peter kneeled between them to reach for the magazine Mike had discarded on the side table earlier. Leaning farther forward over Mike, his mostly unbuttoned shirt gaping, he plucked up the glass there and helped himself to a mouthful of Mike’s beer before telescoping back into a cross-legged sit.

Mike tightened a too-loose fret, his reproving gaze meeting Peter’s look of mild inquiry before Peter opened the music magazine, spread it open on Mike’s shins, and pulled Mike’s bare feet onto his lap in one smooth movement. He bent, reading the article and pressing small circles into the ball of Mike’s foot with his thumbs, his actions flowing, seamless, like when he laid his hands on an instrument. Mike swallowed down the purr threatening to break loose from his throat.

Such typical Peter, head bent, hair in his eyes, as he focused. Mostly when he was playing. Absorbed. Still kneading with one hand, he flicked out the other to turn the page. Those long-fingered hands that made water fountain plastic cups look so small when he held them. They even made books look small, especially when he marked his place with a finger when interrupted mid-page, and forgot he had the book in his hand, waving it around, gesturing to explain something. Were those new beads? A necklace? It looked like a topaz stone on a bit of leather.

As if feeling Mike’s scrutiny, Peter looked up. “Better?” he asked, rubbing lower, pressing a spot on Mike’s sole that made Mike’s head sag on his shoulders, had it rolling it in a half-circle.

The twitch Mike gave wasn’t so much to do with Peter’s touch finding a nerve. No, the flick on the raw was the realization Peter was treating Mike like Micky. Suggesting he watch cartoons and now trying to calm him down? Micky often sat on the floor when the other three occupied the couch, watching TV. He leaned against Peter’s legs and Peter kinda petted him, twiddling a finger into his curls or scratching his nails into Micky’s head or massaging the base of his neck. It quieted him for bed, was the logic. And when Micky got too excited, Peter facing him and rubbing his shoulders and the tops of his arms calmed him.

 _I’m not Micky_ , Mike wanted to say. But would Peter stop what he was doing to Mike’s feet if he said it out loud? He heaved a sigh.

“Woah. You’re restless today.” And now Peter did stop, his fingers curled around Mike’s foot, thumbs poised, his fingers deceptively gentle, because they zinged with strength and purpose. “Is this because of that chick? Because that sigh was pure Davy. Hey, maybe the body swap wasn’t just one way. What happened in the pad today? Did a bad wizard come by?” He mimed waving a wand at Mike then at two other people, currently absent.

“And that is a very Micky thing to say and do. So, you know, you could be right about the swap thing.”

Their shared smile at Mike’s reply turned Peter’s eyes from toffee to caramel. He bent his head again, running strong knuckles down Mike’s sole. “Amanda. The chick with Toby last night at the Hullabaloo?”

“Ya know, I still can’t believe what she said!” Mike hated when his voice rose like that. It sounded like a yelp.

“She was witty.” Peter shrugged. “I guess the British are. Look at Davy.”

“You must be joking.” Mike’s Davy impression would have fooled no one.

“That’s my line.” Peter’s imitation was better. He was still pressing, now at the base of Mike’s big toe. Mike had no idea what it was supposed to be doing. Didn’t much care. He twisted for his glass and took a gulp of beer.

“More?” he asked, holding it out to Peter. “While the kids are out?”

Peter took it and swigged. And that was another thing. The way they shared glasses or cups. Or bottles or cans. Or plates. Or— Peter placed the glass on the end table near him and resumed his massage. Mike frowned. Did Peter think Mike was drinking too much, or something? Because—

“What was it she said? That we were only a half pouch of good grass and nothing on telly away from making out?” Peter cradled Mike’s foot to him and shook his head. “ _Telly_.”

“ _Telly_ ,” Mike echoed, as if the silly word was the focus point of the sentence. 

“Well, you showed her who you’d rather make out with, huh?”

“I guess.” Mike found he’d folded his arms across his chest. He brought up a hand and touched its fingers to his lips.  

He wasn’t proud of what had happened, of what he’d done, even if the English chick—Amanda, Peter had said—had been asking for it. Mike had offered her his chair – a scarce commodity at the night club, but she’d perched on the arm instead. Deliberate positioning herself to be taller. Higher up. It had been easy to pull her down onto his lap, to slide one hand into her long blonde hair and use the other to cup her face and so position her for his kiss. She hadn’t struggled or resisted. Much. She’d wanted it. Had stared at his mouth, daring him on. He could still taste her lipstick.

“D’you think you’ll see her again?” Peter, head bent to his task, dug his thumbs in. Hard. Just for a moment, but it registered.

“I don’t know, man.” Mike curled his toes around Peter’s thumb, like a baby gripping a finger.

“She’s here at the beach with Toby for the rest of the summer. Secondment, from her magazine with the sister publication here.”

Mike knew that as well as Peter did, knew that their neighbour Toby had offered her spare room to the Londoner, hoping to gain points at the stupid magazine she sometimes sold articles to, where she wanted to get on staff. What he didn’t know was the reason for the private smile curving Peter’s lips. Didn’t know…if Peter liked Toby. It struck him that Toby and the newcomer looked a bit alike. Acted a bit alike. Did Peter—

“She looked a good kisser.”

“ _What?_ ” That startled Mike from his musing. “Man, I’m not gonna kiss and tell! I never asked you about Valerie.” He didn’t know why that broke free.

“Do you want to ask about Valerie?”

“Pete—”

“I guess I mean it looked a good kiss. We all thought so.”

“Y’all th… You were _watching_? You were watching.” They…tended to, with Davy mostly the subject of observation. “I guess I should just be relieved y’all didn’t have binoculars and do a running commentary. Or record the score in a book.” _Micky again._

“Maybe it was you, then. That you’re a good kisser. I thought so with the second one.”

Mike jerked free and crossed his legs, a bookend to Peter. He hadn’t realized anyone had witnessed that second kiss, later, when he’d walked the blonde to her door after they’d given her a ride home. He’d almost accepted her invitation in. Okay, so he’d promised the guys he’d be the driver yesterday, but they could have walked home from the girls’ or Pete could have driven them the rest of the way. He hadn’t drunk much.

 _It’s all Davy’s fault for going_ _home with Toby._ Toby, who’d driven herself and Amanda there, had made the rest of them promise to look after her guest when she and Davy’d split. Mike didn’t quite understand that relationship. Sure, Toby had gone through the Davy-infatuation stage common to most girls, worse in local ones, and had come out the other side, far as Mike could see. And yet the pair of them had a ‘friends who sometimes hook-up’ deal going on. Which meant Peter couldn’t be sweet on their neighbour, could he? Not with Davy in the mix?

Mike gave up pondering it and shook his head. “I guess we just don’t have no secrets in this place.”

“No. Not really.” Peter tugged at Mike’s other foot. Mike resisted, making Peter pull harder, so that when he won the tussle, he was now closer. He didn’t resume his work, however. Just studied Mike. “What, Michael?”

“Nothing. Well, just, don’t you think it was a weird thing for a chick to talk about, that it’d be hot to see two guys making out?  That she’d pay good money to see?” He tried to stem the tide that had burst free. “I didn’t know chicks _thought_ about that sort of stuff, man!”

“Why not? I think about two chicks making out. Don’t tell me you haven’t. It’s _hot_ , man.” Peter closed his eyes for a few seconds, the smile back. “Remember how Davy got, over the Harrison twins? The things he imagined?”

“Well, yeah, I guess.” At least that made Mike grin. A little. “And the nearest he got was different days. Except for that one night when they discovered what he was up to.”

“Huh, yeah. Good thing his black eye healed relatively quickly.” Peter closed the neglected magazine. “They sure were livewires, Amanda and Toby together. Could be an interesting summer. She said she’d have a supper party when she was sorted out.”

“You sure seemed to have a nice long talk with her,” Mike said slowly. “And seems you remember everything she said.” _Oh. Not Toby. The new chick._ Mike knew his duty as a roommate. As a band mate. As a good buddy. “See, me and her, it wasn’t. We weren’t. Aren’t.” And left it there. Peter would understand.


	2. Chapter Two

Peter would understand because he understood Mike, Mike thought. Up until a moment ago, he would have bookended that with _just as I understand him_. But now he had difficulty interpreting Peter’s reply of “You aren’t…” and even more so the one word “Oh,” that he followed it with.

“ _No,_ ” Mike underlined.

Peter shimmied his head a little to shake his bangs from his face. “But a minute ago, you said you didn’t know if you’d be seeing her again.”

“And now I do know.” Mike was still floundering, and wondering what was lodged in his chest. He had to take a deep breath to get past it, whatever the blockage was. He fought to hold still as Peter scanned his face, seeking something. Whatever it was, he seemed to find it. His eyes widened for a quick heartbeat of a second and that tiny little flicker of a smile, that private, secret-thoughts curl of his lips Mike was beginning to dislike, touched his mouth again.

He almost jumped as Peter huffed out a laugh.

“Imagine flying in from London and just going straight to the Hullaballoo within minutes of arriving. Not even unpacking. And her face when she couldn’t get served alcohol.”

That had been a sight, Mike had to agree.

“What even _is_ a gin and It?” Peter wondered.

“I don’t know,” Mike admitted. “Maybe she’ll serve some at her supper party. Whatever _that_ even is.”

Peter had finished pressing something on Mike’s feet that made his knees jerk, as though they’d been hit with one of those little hammers doctors used, and now slotted his fingers between Mike’s toes. He pressed his feet backward, toward the legs, then forward again, his movements gentle and slow. When he used both hands to secure one ankle and rotate that foot, Mike was again reminded of Micky. Peter told Micky to rotate his feet to counteract the repetitive back and forth he did on the drum pedals, the same repetitive movements Peter made on the organ pedals whenever he switched to that instrument.

“That’s nice,” Mike admitted.

“Good.”

Peter bent his head again, lower this time, topic of conversation closed. And not catching anything of his expression meant not catching anything from it. What Mike did catch was a sparkle or a glint or something when the light hit the stone on Peter’s necklace. He wondered just when Peter had gotten it. Where. From who… He looped back.

“Do _you_ want to talk about Valerie?”

That got Peter’s attention, if him rubbing his chin against the leather and stone of his necklace before he tilted his head back to regard Mike was any indication.

“Valerie. See, we aren’t.”

Mike had a spit second in which to decide whether to be insulted by Peter’s imitation of him. His accent, his words. He chose Door B. Not. “But you were. She dumped Ronnie.” _For you._

“She’s a kind person. Gracious, you dig?”

“Yeah. She is. A real decent lady,” Mike agreed, meaning it, before a connection between his sentence and Peter’s reply struck him. “You mean…”

“She felt very badly about his behaviour. His actions. That he was such a sosh.”

“No arguments here.” And yet Valerie, from a much richer and classier family, was well, _classy_. Not snobby at all. Davy had explained it as old money versus new money. Mike, not being from any money, supposed he must be right. _Huh._ They’d speculated that Valerie’s mother’s sudden decision to take Valerie to finish her education in New York was to get her away from undesirables she was mixing with here in LA, and Mike had felt enraged on Peter’s behalf. Now he wondered if _undesirables_ meant social climbers, like that uptight hanger-on, Ronnie. He frowned.  

“Wait. You’re saying she went on dates with you as an apology for that jerk’s behaviour? ’Cause I don’t buy that for one minute.”

“Thank you?” Peter’s pleased grin had Mike on the defensive.

“I just meant—”

“’S’okay. No. Not just. We like each other, of course. But it was never gonna be Romeo and Juliet, you dig?”

“But you both write.” _And send gifts…_

Peter shrugged. “So? Like I said, we like each other.”

_Huh._ Peter’s lips were forming a question, making Mike think quickly to change tracks. “Well, you can maybe go see her in her fancy New York institute when you go back to the Village to see your folk buddies. Aren't you about due a trip?” Peter returned to NY a few times a year.

“Oh, I don't know. Hey, play that new song you were working on?”

Mike had almost forgotten he still held the guitar, had been resting his folded hands on its side. He picked out the chorus, clamping his lips together so no stray words escaped. His feet rested in Peter’s lap now and he had to fight not to curl his toes into the soft denim of his long beach shorts, his ex-favourite pair of blue jeans given a new incarnation when they got too ragged to wear in their original form. Mike had removed what remained of the gaping back pockets for him, taking his pen knife to slit the few stiches still holding on. His gaze was often drawn to the darker blue pocket-shaped patches on Peter’s butt. The mere thought now had him shifting a little where he sat.

Peter suddenly felt too close, close enough for Mike to catch his scent. And yeah, that was another thing. How they all used the same communal laundry soap and toothpaste and mouthwash and soap and deodorant and shaving cream, but they didn’t all smell the same. Pete didn’t smell like Mike did, for instance. The scents common to the four of them were overlaid by the individual scents of their shampoos, and conditioning rinses and hair stuff and cologne, in those of them who wore that stuff. Like they all had the same base notes, but individual top notes that emerged after. Yeah, he had to stop flicking through the stupid fashion mags that found their way into the pad via Davy. Via Toby, he guessed.

Huh. He inhaled anyway, wanting to catch Peter’s warm-sand and warmer-sun scent. Vibe. Whatever. Peter wasn’t massaging or rubbing any longer. He was beating time to Mike’s playing, tapping on the top of Mike’s foot that he still held, almost negligently, in his hand. And that the taps reverberated throughout Mike’s body made Mike stop. He wanted to pull his foot free as much as he wanted to leave it where it was and burrow the other under the human pretzel of Peter’s legs.

“Is this weird?” he burst out.

“Weird? How?”

“I don’t know, man! That…that there’s hardly any personal space between us all. That we…touch all the time.” An image clobbered him. Him, standing right up against Micky, grinning into Micky’s laughing eyes that were almost on a level with his own, having been pulled closer and closer by one of Micky’s crazy jokes until they were almost nose-to-nose. Or the way any one of them might hang off or over any other to read something over their shoulder, or steal off their plate, or just drape themselves for support when tired.

“It’s soothing.”

Mike bristled at Peter’s answer. “That makes us sound like animals in captivity!” _Or, oh god, monkeys in a zoo._

“What?” Peter wasn’t prey to the images crowding Mike’s brain. Just as well. “And weird? No. Something like this would be weird.” _This_ was him lifting Mike’s foot to his mouth to nip at his big toe. He didn’t bite down, or even graze it, just used his teeth to imprison Mike’s flesh, and the feel, the wait, the promise of wet heat and wetter suction and a more punishing bite went straight to Mike’s cock.

“Thi— _shit_ , Peter! My God, stop!” He whipped his foot free and didn’t know what to do with it, settling for crossing his legs at the ankles and clenching his toes. He tried to shuffle backward, glad he couldn’t see his own face. It burned red as sunburn and must look like a deer caught in headlights. He made a goofy face to cover it up.

“Sorry.” Peter didn’t look sorry. “But you have nice feet.”

“Well, so do you too, but that’s no reason to…”

“I’ve stopped.” Peter held up his hands in surrender at Mike’s babbling. “I don’t get why…” Eyes narrowed, he leaned and snagged the guitar from Mike’s fingers, Mike powerless to cling to his shield. Peter eyed Mike’s bulge. “Ah. Okay.”

“ _Okay?_ ” Mike drew his knees up to his chin.

“Uh-huh.” Peter placed the guitar on the end table. “You’re on edge because of that chick.”

As cover stories went, that was—the coward’s way out. And he wasn’t _that_ complete a coward. “Or the way you were touching me.”

“Or…?” Maybe Peter, unbelieving, wanted him to repeat, but there was no going back for Mike now. No retreating from the waves, not even in jest. He plunged in. Headfirst.

“Or the way you’re looking at me.”

“The way—how? How am I looking at you?”

The extra quiet and extra deep to Peter’s tone made Mike shiver. “The same way I look at you.” _Like I want you._ He hoped he hadn’t said that last out loud. But maybe there was no need to. Not with Peter right there, his heat and intent reaching across the gap between them.

“What…do you want, Michael?”

And like Peter’s “ _Mmm_ ,” of earlier, this pulsed between them, only a lot more loaded. A heap more meaningful. A ton more possible.

And there, then, looking at Peter opposite him, his open face and wide eyes, Mike did what he always did when he wanted something. Like when he’d wanted to leave home. To join the air force. To leave the air force. To go to college. To leave college. To move one thousand two hundred miles from Texas to LA: he steeled himself and reached out and took it. And this time, he didn’t have so far to reach. Peter was right there, ready and waiting for him with his sweet-strong softness and sun-kissed skin and cinnamon freckles and that faint salt and sand scent Mike could smell everywhere. It was stronger now, beating at him. His legs tangled as he moved, but it was easy to stretch and lean and—

For a moment, his lips touched lips that were soft yet firm when he pressed against them. The shiny softness of Peter’s apricot-amber hair was under his hand, for Mike to thread his fingers in and tighten his hold, to grasp. For one second. Until the lips against his pulled away and the soft silk ducked free from his hand with an abruptness that left a couple of strands between Mike’s fingers.

“No. _No_ , Michael.” With a firm head shake, Peter swung his legs to the floor and stood. “No. This is all wrong.”


	3. Chapter Three

Mike fought not to press his hand to his chest even though his heart seemed to drop. Or shrink. No: seize up, like when he dived into too-cold water. He was frozen, because his body had seized up too, and in a stupid sort of mid-lunge, but he worked hard on getting back into a sitting position. Only for mere seconds, though, before he found himself on his feet and following Peter. To do what, to say what, he had no idea. Jump off the sun deck and split, was his preference. He peeked around for his shoes, just in case.

“All wrong and _not_ what happens,” Peter finished, his voice still stern. At the kitchenette sink, he ran the faucet and filled a tumbler with cold water. He didn’t drink, instead rinsing his mouth and spitting the water back out. Only then did he drink.

“Want some?” He refilled the plastic glass and held it out behind him, without looking. “That beer was not a good idea. I should have remembered it makes my mouth taste gross. That can’t have been pleasant. Sorry.”

Numb now, instead of frozen, Mike came close enough to take the water Peter offered and placed it on the counter. He didn’t trust he’d be able to hold it, much less lift it to his mouth and drink, without spilling it.

“Sorry,” he repeated, echoing Peter, trying to match his intonation and inflection, as if that would make it make sense. It didn’t. “I’m sorry,” he said, this time on his own account, and so it sounded almost as stricken as he felt.

“You should be.” Peter took his hands from their grip on the sides on the sink and turned to face Mike, as close to angry as Mike could ever remember having seen him. They stood close, not quite as close as any of them usually did, but still a lot closer than most people would have deemed normal or conventional.

“Because _this_ ”—Peter’s gesturing between them hit first himself then Mike in the chest, round about where his heart thudded—“is not _that_.” _That_ was Peter raising his hand, quick and true, to cup Mike’s face in a firm hold, his fingernails raking through the sideburn to clutch in Mike’s hair. Mike stood his ground, refusing to flinch, and so was close enough to see Peter’s face soften and some of the warmth come back into his eyes.

“Although, _that_ is interesting.” Peter rubbed his palm over Mike’s sideburn and scratched his nails harder into Mike’s scalp. “ _That_ could be part of _this_ at some point. But not now.” His voice firmed again. “Not until we figure out what _this_ is.”

“ _This…_ ” Mike repeated the mantra, or whatever it was Peter had used. Such as tiny, everyday word, a magic one, to hold so much within it. It hissed with power and possibilities and promise. Mike kept his voice tiny when he said it, to not break any spell being woven, or, worse, make Peter drop his hand. He didn’t. Him joining in the incantation made Peter raise his other hand too, holding Mike’s face steady between them, to gaze deep into his eyes.

“This that’s been growing and that we’ve been nurturing.”  

 _This_. The sibilance lingered. For Mike, staring into Peter’s eyes, it was like a trick mirror thinning or whatever they did to become clear glass and reveal what was behind them. No, like the world settling itself down again after you shook a snow globe. You had to wait a bit after you’d disturbed it all, but it was there, the real thing all in place and apparent.

Mike began to understand, to dare to hope. The real picture was in scenes all around the pad, not just in Peter sitting next to him on the couch and Mike lunging for him, of which Mike was now ashamed. Take this kitchen. The _growing_ , as Peter had called it, was in every extra cold compress Peter made sure was in the ice box for after practice or gigs. That way they had not only enough for their wrists, but Mike had another for his right hand with its mis-set fingers that ached after too long on the guitar, as Peter knew they did.

Or it was in the shirts and pants that Peter liked more than the others, so Mike hung them at the back of the communal clothes rail in the walk-in closet over there, to hide them from Davy and Micky and save them for Peter. Except for those god-awful brown plaid pants. As much as Mike had left them right at the front, no one else would wear those. So he’d hidden them on a far shelf.

And the big table, where Peter kept Davy and Micky quiet at breakfasts when Mike was sleeping late, after a bout of his insomnia, or if he couldn’t get to bed until the early hours. Mike guessed it was also in how he and Peter went to the library together, so Peter could use some of Mike’s book allowance, or Mike chose books Peter would like too, that they could discuss.

 _Peter, I—_ Mike wanted to say. No. Better to picture it instead, how it had started so quietly, slowly, tiny tendrils budding, weaving their way into sunlight and now fully entwined. They’d nurtured it, Peter had said, and now it blossomed in the sun. It was a thing of the light. It wasn’t a loud-music-fueled kiss in the gloom of a club or a drunken fumble at a party or a lost embrace in the dark of the night beach.

So Mike remained silent, but a slow smile shaped his lips. He knew, because it was mirrored by Peter’s. And Mike didn’t just look at Peter. He gave himself permission to stare deep into the sweetness of those butterscotch brown eyes, looking almost as golden as Peter’s hair here in the sunlight. _Amber_ , Mike thought, rejecting _topaz_. It was easy to look into Peter’s eyes. He wasn’t that much shorter than Mike. Mike often felt and looked taller because he was so lanky. Skinny tall, they called it, whereas Peter was in proportion. When Mike copied his gesture, cupping Peter’s face in both hands, Peter’s pleased, proud-of-Mike smile stretched between Mike’s palms.

 _The light has dawned._ Mike could hear it, in Peter’s baritone, but no one said it out loud. There wasn’t any need to. Not when it felt to natural and right and _right there_ to walk into. When Mike did speak, his voice was shaky. “Not figured _this_ out yet, big Pete? When this started almost two years ago?”

“Some things take a while, or even a lifetime, and you still don’t know what they are.”

“Labels, huh.” Mike hoped his hand was steady as he feathered a thumb across Peter’s cheek. “Labeling things never did any good.”

“Except in a chemistry lab. Then it’s useful.”

So off-beat and so Pete. Wise, in a unique way. Peter kinda saw around and over and through things, sometimes before what was in front of him. People said he was slow or dumb – that was their hang-up.

Mike eased his thumb toward Peter’s mouth, needing to learn its feel. Its softness. And no matter how close together he and Peter stood, it wasn’t enough.

“Not here,” Peter murmured, making Mike ashamed again. Of course not here, in the kitchen bursting with domesticity and communal living. He made a half-move toward the stairs, but that was the spot where Davy sat to read trashy magazines and that Micky used as a jungle gym. No. And the sofa was overlaid with all of them too, making Peter shake his head, reading Mike’s shift toward it.

Peter released Mike’s face to take his hand. Such a simple act—they all held one another’s hands or arms or wrists, but not like this. This was heavy with meaning and Mike used both hands to examine Peter’s. Their fingers of their left hands bore the same callouses from the guitar strings, and the tendons of Peter’s hands were a little more prominent, a result of his keyboard playing, while his hands were nicer, in general, long and shapely. Peter had stopped again.

The instrument podium? It was a special place for Mike and Peter, and somewhere Mike loved to watch Peter and be near him, but again, carried imprints of all four of them. As it should.

“Outside,” Peter said, and Mike nodded.

“Wait.” Mike had to ask. Of course he did. “When…when did you know?”

“Hmm. Perhaps from the start.” Peter nodded.

“And so why didn’t you tell me? Oh. You were waiting for me to figure it out for myself.” _Very Pete._

“That and I couldn’t think of a way to say it that wouldn’t have ended in you decking me.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Yeah, ya’ know, with you bein’ a Texan an’ all.” Peter’s imitation was good. The meaning took a second to register.

“Pete, I wouldn’t have _hit_ you! I could never raise my hand to you!”

“Oh. Never?”

“I just said—”

The pout to Peter’s lips, the coy look he shot Mike from under lowered eyelashes, and the bowed head all caught up with Mike at once and he sagged where he stood. The meaning was like a hit to the chest, and he gasped out loud. “ _Peter!_ ” He was joking, wasn’t he?

 “Outside. Come on.” Peter squeezed Mike’s hand and towed him.

Mike, allowing himself to be led, wondered if this was setting a pattern. Wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Excited, mostly, if he had to own to and name one emotion.

Peter managed to shed his shirt between the door and the sundeck, as usual. One day Mike would see how he did it. And now he dropped Mike’s hand to unknot the strip of leather he was wearing, the one that held a topaz stone. This necklace he placed in the corner, out of the way. He didn’t need any gem stones. He shone.

“Golden,” Mike said, indicating Peter from the crown of his head down to his bare feet. “In the sun. You’re golden.”

Peter touched Mike’s dark hair and light T-shirt. “You’re black and white.”

“And that’s why you couldn’t…” Mike swallowed. “But I’m learning about shades of gray.”

“Yes. You are.”

“Hey!” Mike stayed Peter’s hands on the hem of his T-shirt.

“Take it off. Please.”

“I’m not…made like you,” Mike muttered, indicating Peter. That athletic chest with just the right amount of hair in the right place, between his pecs, to make a Vee. Muscled arms. Shaped back and shoulders.

“No. You’re made like you.” Peter put his hands again on the hem of the tee. “Let me?” he murmured, and Mike bent for Peter to peel the tee from him and immediately copy the upward trajectory of the shirt in ruffling his long fingers through the black fuzz on Mike’s abdomen and chest. “I do like your fur.”

Mike purred. “I’m a Texas wildcat.”

Peter laughed out loud, making Mike snigger too. It was so them, so easy and everyday, yet today charged and hanging there like ripe fruit.

“Here.” Peter sank to the floor in one of his concertina-like folds and took up the bottle of sun lotion from near the tree.

“Right here?” Mike queried, sitting opposite him. Before he could put out a hand to take the bottle, Peter squeezed a dollop into his own hand and rubbed that into his other palm, spreading the lotion.

Mike caught on and sat as still as he could for Peter to rub the stuff along Mike’s shoulders and down his arms. He laughed when Peter squeezed a fat drop onto Mike’s nose, mimicking the stripe of zinc oxide Mike used to anoint his nose with before discovering Coppertone. He had to see to his face himself, Peter being too busy with Mike’s chest. The crisp scent from that brown bottle was another note they all had in common, but even that smelled more seashell and driftwood on Peter.

“I use more,” Peter said, as if reading Mike’s thoughts.

Mike…hoped he couldn’t, particularly not right then, when Peter stopped sitting cross-legged between Mike’s outstretched legs and kinda sat astride him instead, looping his legs around Mike’s hips and and crossing them behind his back.

“Show off,” Mike muttered. All that yoga and meditation and God alone knew what…

“How else am I going to do your back?” Peter countered, smoothing long, deep strokes down it.

Mike could have thought of ten other ways, off the top of his head, but none of them involved Peter’s head in the crook of Mike’s neck or his junk right up against Mike’s, so he rejected them all and simply reflected again on how smart Peter was.


	4. Chapter Four

It seemed rude not to copy what Peter was doing, even if Mike had hardly any sun lotion on his hands to rub onto Peter in exchange. He didn’t let the lack stop him running his palms down Peter’s back, exploring the smoothness and strength of the muscles there. Curious, he scored his nails down, enjoying the ripple and hum of Peter’s reaction.

Finished, Peter leaned back a little, and Mike determined not to be the first to squirm at their proximity. Which, he reflected, was at this point just a twenty-cent word for _boner_. The smile on Peter’s face made him ask, “What are you looking at?”

“You,” Peter replied.

“So maybe the right question is, what do you see?”

“Same answer. You. And you’re _blushing_!” Peter sounded delighted.

“I am not. It’s the sun, giving me a flush.”

“Hmm. Are you okay with me touching you?”

Mike took a quick peep around, tried to peer over the rocks to the sands. “Depends whe— Oh. There. Sure.” He held still for Peter to stroke a gentle finger over his eyebrows and eyelashes, the moles on his face and neck, and his sideburns.

“I like these,” Peter announced.

“You have ’em too,” Mike pointed out. “Well, least I _think_ that’s what they are.”

“Oh, you think I should grow mine longer, like yours?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I will.” Peter nodded. “And then you’ll grow yours longer still, right?”

“Is that some sort of comment on something there?” Mike queried.

Peter didn’t answer and stopped his stroking in favour of rubbing his nose against Mike’s, his move surprising a strangled giggle from Mike. Peter’s nose was long and sorta pointed or sloped, to balance the length, and the friction he was making very gentle. And very nice. When he stopped, Mike rubbed back, wondering if that was right. It felt right. Felt good.

It was different, looking into Peter’s eyes from this close. They were rounded and wide, normally, with enthusiasm or curiosity, but they were long too, and looked hooded and deep-set when Peter was absorbed or stoned or drunk, his bangs tangling in his lashes probably contributing to the effect. Mike liked that Peter’s eyes were brown, like his, but a different brown, one that changed from the dark velvet of Mike’s to tawny, depending not on the light or what colors Peter was wearing, but on his mood, Mike felt.

“Can I…do something? Something I’ve been wanting to do for a while?” he asked.

Peter nodded, to laugh a second later when Mike poked his finger in Peter’s dimple, which of course made it dimple more. “You do that deliberately, don’t you?” Mike challenged. He’d always thought so, and more so now with Peter flashing _that_ smile. He traced his finger over Peter’s mouth.

“Are you planning on kissing me at some point soon?” Peter asked.

“Maybe. But…I don’t really know how to kiss a guy,” Mike admitted.

“So I noticed.” Peter indicated with a jerk of his head the pad’s living room with its couch and its lunge.

“Hey! Not fair. Look, fine. I’ll give it my best shot, okay?” Mike leaned in and tilted his head. He raised an eyebrow in challenge, added a smolder in invitation, and threw in a smirk for good measure.

Peter rolled his eyes. He waited until Mike relaxed and softened his stance, and only then leaned forward, and just enough for Mike to want to and have to close what gap remained between them, and so for their lips to meet. It was a tiny, soft peck, just a small brush, almost chaste. It was also the first of a series, all of them small and sweet, eager and yet undemanding, their lips tracing, mapping, learning the feel and the touch of the other’s. It might have looked innocent, except for them both being naked from the waist up and pressed hard against the other, and getting harder by the second. And it all felt right. The rightest thing so far, the world settling firmly into place.

Mike leaned his forehead against Peter’s when they broke apart, needing the continued connection. He touched a finger to his mouth and for some reason was reminded of Davy smearing Vaseline on his lips and even on his front teeth before a show, to get that shiny, wet-lipped look under the lights. An old theater trick, he’d said.

“What.” Peter must have felt Mike’s giggle trying to rise. He joined his finger to Mike’s.

“We’re probably gonna need a stick of Carmex,” Mike said by way of explanation.

“We can get one.”

 _We._ Again, such a tiny word, but enormous in its potential.

“Honey,” Peter said.

“Honey?” Mike tried not to flinch. Peter couldn't know about— It didn't seem so. Mike pulled himself back into the present. "Honey?" He thickened his accent when he repeated it. Peter liked that. He was interested in the sounds.

“Your voice. It sounds like honey dripping. Yet it’s kind of smoke-tinged.”

“Oh.” Mike had never thought before about what images voices sounded like, or if that was even possible, but he would now. Well, Peter’s, anyway. “Honey. Right. So, you wanna French?” He didn’t do the eyebrow raise this time.

“ _Oui, mon chat sauvage_.”

“You with your town talk.”

“Huh?”

So there were some Texas-isms Peter didn’t know. “You and your private school edumacation,” Mike amended. He angled his head again, Peter’s fitting neatly with it. Naturally. The lick of a tongue against his mouth had Mike reacting in surprise then opening obediently. Why had he assumed Peter would be a passive partner?  There were too many tastes to Peter’s mouth to catalog, but there was no rush. Not when everything was honey-slick and honey-slow and honey-sweet, and when the curl of Peter’s fingers at Mike’s nape held him into the heat of Peter’s body pressed against his.

This was still tender, but with _teasing_ and _seductive_ added to it. There was so much to experience, to learn, and Mike had only mapped the roof of Peter’s mouth before he squashed down his kick of pride at Peter being the first to pull away to breathe. Mike knew he had better breath control. But if Peter was panting slightly, Mike was flushed hotter. He bent his head to hide it, kissing the hollow of Peter’s throat and feeling the vibration of the surprised _hmm_ Peter gave in reaction. It made him trail his lips and scrape his chin across Peter’s neck, dropping a kiss or two on the way, to graze when he wondered if Peter was sensitive: just under his ear. He didn’t seem unduly so. Mike nipped a little lower, to land a bite at the spot where the strong column of Peter’s neck met his broad shoulder, and Peter bucked underneath him.

“ _Interesting_ ,” Mike observed, soothing the bite with a soft lick of his tongue tip. Pulling away a little, he filed the information away for future reference. Had a feeling he’d be referring to it often. And that knowledge was heady stuff, even out here in the sun and breeze of the beach-and-sea Saturday afternoon.

“So, first base cleared,” Peter observed in the baritone that did things to Mike’s nerve endings.

“Also known as neckin’,” Mike added, looking at the spot he'd nibbled on Peter's neck. He hadn't left a mark. _Pity_.

“Does this mean we’re going steady?”

 “If anything, I feel dizzy, not steady,” Mike drawled.

“You mean you’re in a tizzy, Mr. Nesmith?”

“Why, ah do declare ah am, Mr. Tork.” But the seriousness behind Peter’s jokey question hadn’t passed Mike by. And it deserved a response. “And in answer, if that’s what you—”

“Yes.” Peter’s answer came fast and fierce, but the light in his eyes was soft.

Mike thought his own eyes were probably shining too. “Oh, but you got one thing wrong there, shotgun. Technically, it’s second base.” He indicated their shirtlessness.

“Also known as petting,” Peter added and stroked Mike’s chest fuzz again.

 _Smartass._ Mike looked forward to curbing those tendencies of Peter’s.

“And about third base—I think we should move Micky down.”

“We should wha— Oh. _Huh._ ” Mike considered their present and future sleeping configurations and blinked in a way that had nothing to do with being in direct sunlight. “You know, you’re _way_ pushier than I ever expected. Which is going to be…interesting.” He received an almost shy smile in response, which didn’t fool him for a second.

“Move Micky down rather than move Davy up. He’ll go crazy if we touch his stuff.” Peter firmed his lips.

“Well, I suppose the kids are old enough not to need adult supervision any longer. But dang, they grow up so fast.” Mike thought for a moment, then laughed. “We’re gonna regret this, aren’t we.”

“That part? Possibly. Actually, almost certainly,” Peter replied. “When should—”

“They do say there’s no time like the present.”

Peter’s eyes widened a second before he singsonged, “You are horny.”

“Hey now, come on, babe! That’s not fair! Of course I am, after that. And like you’re not? Little teas—”

He was cut off by Peter leaping to his feet and tugging him up too. They got stuck in the doorway, both rushing in at the same time, and neither giving ground to the other. Then it was a race to and up the stairs and into Mike and Micky’s room. Peter stood and peered around, eyes narrowed as if measuring spaces and angles, and Mike thought he knew what Peter was planning.

“How to make the single beds into a double?”

Peter dropped to sit on Mike’s bed. “So soon, Mr. Nesmith?”

“Soon? It’s been two years already! I’m not fixin’ to wait much longer before I—”

“Before _we_.”

“Yeah.” Mike scratched his chin. “And maybe you’d better get your ass offa my bed before I…well. You can guess. And maybe we’d better get to work,” he added, in case Peter made him spell it out.

Because with Peter sitting there, against the headboard of Mike’s bed, on purpose, to tempt him, Mike doubted he could spell his own name at that moment. His turn to pull Peter to his feet, and he tugged hard, making Peter rock a little, just so Mike could steady him and get in another feel of those toned, sun-warmed arms.

 

* * * *

 

He was making what he hoped would be his last trip down the stairs when the front door opened and the voices of their two other roommates reached him. Well, he was a musician—facing the music shouldn’t be that big a deal. He shook out the stray shirt of Peter’s he’d found under the bed and slipped it on, not buttoning it up.

“What’s going on with my stuff?” demanded Micky as soon as he saw Mike at the top of the stairs.

Mike descended and deposited a couple of dirty glasses, also found under a bed, on the kitchen counter. “We’re moving you downstairs.”

“WhadidIdo?” Micky wailed, all one long note.

“Nothing, good buddy.” Mike rubbed Micky’s shoulder. “Just, you’re sharing with Davy from now on.”

“Mike and I want to share a room now,” added Peter, emerging from the downstairs bedroom to stand next to Mike.

“Oh.” Davy stared from Mike to Peter, then at them both, a new look in his eyes. “Just one question.” This was addressed to Mike. Davy jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Micky. “Does he snore?”

“No,” said Mike, hoping it was gonna be that simple. Doubting it.

“ _You_ do,” Peter said.

Davy’s smile was a little bit evil. “That’s not _my_ problem, though, is it?”

“Hey, Peter, does Davy talk in his sleep?” Micky asked.

Peter shook his head.

“Ha. Well, _you_ do,” Micky answered, opening the icebox to get a cold drink.

“Still? I used to.” Peter shot Mike a quick look. “My brother used to tell me I did.”

“Yeah. I heard you when you fell asleep on the beach,” Micky explained, knocking the cap off a soda.

“Davy never complained,” Peter observed.

“I wouldn’t notice. I’m out like a light.” Davy took the bottle from Micky to drink it for him.

“A _light_? Seems it’s more like a buzz saw,” Mike corrected Davy.

“And it was in a foreign language. I thought you might be a spy, so I followed you for a day, in different disguises. You didn’t know.” Micky was smug.

“ _Really?_ ” Peter perched on the table, entranced by Micky’s story. “Where’d I go?”

“Oh, it was boring. The music shop, then a second-hand bookshop and then that organic café. You met some chicks and some guys and talked chords.”

“Micky! Don’t go following any of us around!" Mike yelped, his heart thumping. What if Micky had followed him and— "In general, don't follow folks around!”

“Folkies. That’s right.” Micky nodded. “Folk singers,” he elaborated.

“And especially don’t follow Peter around.” _Especially now._

“I won’t. It’s boring. No microfilm passed mouth to mouth through kissing a sexy blonde in a mini skirt; no stolen weapons plans left in hollows in tree trunks…”

Their usual chatter continued as they decided on what to fix for dinner and who should do what. It mirrored the start to the day, which had begun with the banality of breakfast, with _its_ food and chat, then taken a turn not for the bizarre or crazy like usual, but the perfect. Mike grinned at the thought, and Peter caught his eye and smiled back. Davy nudged Micky and pointed at them.

“Wow. If all it takes is sharing a room with Peter to put you in a good mood like this, you should have done it _months_ back,” Micky commented.

“Nah. The time wasn’t right. Some things take a while,” Mike replied.

“Or a lifetime,” Peter added.


	5. Chapter Five

_I should shower_ , Mike thought, putting away the last of the dishes. He’d volunteered to dry and shelve. _Shower_ and _shave_. Because that was what he did before a date and this—he glanced up the hurricane stairs again—felt sorta like a date. Problem was, it was kinda late to do either, in the downstairs bathroom. He wiped the sink and counter again, and did a quick tidy away of the magazines and books, records and shoes that lay scattered over the pad’s surfaces and floor, the inevitable detritus of any given day.

Squabbling voices, one with a Manchester accent and the other an LA native speaker, gabbled from the downstairs bedroom. Davy and Micky did have to learn how to shake down together, but enough was enough. “Guys, cool it, wouldya? It’s gettin’ late.”

Something about someone _having more cosmetics than Macy’s_ reached him. “You know, if you two can’t get along, we can always turn the No Room into a bedroom, for one of you? Okay, so it gives us more space in our bedrooms to dump most of our clothes in there, and it’s handy to store the instruments too, but it can easily be done.”

As he’d expected, the thought of the not-that-big, tiny-windowed downstairs room, currently their communal walk-in closet, shut them up. He finished casting his eye over the store cupboard and making a mental list of what they needed—practically everything except cereal, Kool-Aid, and a tin of salted anchovies? What in the world?

“Mike, is one half of this room bigger than the other? Come see,” Micky whined, sticking his head out of the door.

“You know, there’s a roll of painter’s tape in the garage. Stick a strip down the middle of the room, then see which half is bigger.” Mike hung the dishcloth straighter so it dried evenly.

“Ha. Ha.” Micky vanished again.

“And simmer down. Pete’s already in bed,” Mike called after him. _Hmm. Nothing else to tidy or wipe?_

“Davy, when Mike says to simmer, do you feel like you’re a pot of chili on a stove?”

“Nah, man,” Davy replied to his roommate. “And if you do, you’re weird. But I am tired. So yeah, pipe down.”

“ _Pipe_ down? Now I feel like a church organ,” Micky complained.

“That’s because you’re very weird.”

Mike…kinda agreed with Davy, but loved every last loose screw of Micky’s and hoped he never tightened any of them. He made a round of the pad, checking doors and windows were locked, that nothing was left switched on that shouldn’t be. He usually did a patrol, before turning in, but tonight found himself taking longer than usual. _Shower, shave?_ went through his head again. Jeez, at this rate he’d be driving to pick up a posy of flowers or box of candy from the all-night gas station.

Berating himself for doing it, he pulled Mr. Schneider’s string for any last-minute pearls of wisdom the fifth Monkee might have to offer. It was either that or start straightening the pictures on the wall, which was one step up from eatin’ grapes off of the wallpaper.

“The race is not always to the swift,” opined the dummy.

_True, but…_ Mike gave it another try.

“He who hesitates is lost,” came the contradictory maxim.

“Best outa three,” Mike muttered, hating himself but giving the cord a third surreptitious tug.  

“What do I know? I’m only a dummy. Jeez!” came in loud tones. Loud Los Angeles-accented tones. _Micky!_ The kid was always tinkering with something, usually for a gag-related reason. Mike was still grinning as he said his goodnights and climbed the stairs. He shut the bedroom door behind him as quickly as he could because, _fuck_ , the sight of Peter, sitting up in bed, reading by the soft glow of his bedside lamp, wisps of incense smoke curling about his hair, was not for anyone else’s eyes.

Mike’s mouth dried, and he feared his eyes were bugging out of his head like in a cartoon. _Jesus!_ Did Peter loll around shirtless—or more—when sharing with Davy? And he’d showered. Not shaved though. Smart compromise. Peter’s books and banjo and a music notation notebook rested on the nightstand on his side of the bed. Mike’s notebook and his mouth organ lay on his table. It looked…right. _Settled_.

Peter marked his page and added that book to his pile. “All locked up?”

Which reminded Mike. He turned the key in the door he still leaned against. “It is now.”

“And the pad’s cleaned and tidied?”

“It’s just my usual routine. I…might have taken a bit longer tonight. Although I shouldn’t have, knowing _this_ was waiting for me.” Mike paid due homage to the sight before him.

“I’ve just been reading,” replied Peter, all wide-eyed innocence and…sandalwood! That was another note, maybe the missing one. Of course. The incense. It wasn’t that far removed from their soap, sort of woodsy and herbal. And so very Peter.

“I’m gonna grab a shower. Well, you have…” _Yeah, it’s not exactly some tit-for-tat situation_ , Mike berated himself, crossing to the less-than-half bath off his room, a bathroom so tiny the door had to open outwards. If it had opened inwards, it would have hit the basin opposite. Just a tiny WC with a basin, but with the detachable showerhead jammed onto the basin faucet and the user standing on a couple of old towels, it was possible to have something not completely unlike a shower.

It was necessary for emergencies, they’d reasoned, should two of them need to bathe at the same time. Mike’s brain jammed on that last thought. The shower downstairs was plenty big. Big enough for two. And damn, if the image of him showering with Peter wasn’t…arousing. He opened the cold faucet more, trying to calm himself down. He could hardly walk out of there sporting a Texas panhandle. A guy needed to preserve some mystery. Hopefully the towel would conceal some…obviousness, and Peter was a guy. He’d understand.

Which got him to thinking about how different this would be to being with a chick. It required a different approach, not saying stuff like “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to, but I bet you’ll like it. It’s nice. Feels real good.” _Good Lord._ Did Peter use such sleazy lines? If Peter greeted him with, “We don’t have to do anything. If it never goes further than this, that’s fine. More than,” he’d—

“What’s the joke?” Peter regarded him as he made for the bed. “Or just nerves? Because I’ve got something that’d help us relax.”

Mike sat close and put his hand over Peter’s mouth in case Peter’s next words were, “Something nice, that feels good, you dig?” or anything similar. It’d send Mike into hysterics. He felt high already, fighting the giggles as it was. “I really don’t think we need the half pouch of good grass,” he whispered. Peter’s mouth twitched under his hand, and Mike used the opportunity to explore the little button-type mole on Peter’s top lip. Hmm, okay, so Peter wasn’t sensitive there. But Mike had a few more ideas of places to try, ideas that were derailed when Peter sucked Mike’s fingers into his mouth and twirled his tongue around them, getting ahead again.

His other hand twitched Mike’s towel from his waist. “You don’t need that,” he pulled his mouth free to say. “It wasn’t really covering anything.”

That was just such pure Peter. Who at least hadn’t said anything like, _let’s get you out of these wet things_. “Sure.” Mike sat back a little to stroke a finger into Peter’s hair, swirling it through the bangs to hook them behind Peter’s ear. Peter’s long hair usually covered his ears, but Mike still recalled the first time he’d seen them, long and sorta pointed and matching his nose in being kinda pixie-like.

“What…” Peter shivered when Mike traced the lobe of his ear. He shuddered when Mike reached the tip. “ _Careful_ ,” came on a gasp.

“Knew it!” Mike was appalled to realize he’d said that out loud. But God, a naked Peter in front of him, quivering at Mike’s touch, eyes half-hooded, lips parted…

“Better stop,” Peter hissed.

Mike didn’t. “I can’t believe I can touch you like this,” he replied. “And I haven’t even started on your freckles.”

“Oh yeah? Well I can’t believe I can touch _you_ like _this_!” Peter’s retaliation took the form of a pounce and those long, slim fingers tickling down Mike’s side, leaving a ripple of gooseflesh in their wake and turning Mike into a curled ball of protesting, defensive reaction.

“Hold on there, shotgun,” he wheezed when he had enough breath.

“Nah,” replied Peter, tickling along Mike’s hipbone and straying his fingers in the trail there. “Not when you’re at my mercy.”

“Ooh, that there’s fightin’ talk, big Peter!”

It was a melee of Mike’s long, gangly arms and Peter’s toned biceps and two pairs of legs twining for a minute until the twin beds parted like the waves and Mike fell through the gap to the floor underneath, hitting it ass first, with all four of his limbs stuck up above him, like he was down a well or stuck in a tub. The only part he didn’t mind was Peter kinda hovering on top of him. The gap soon widened more and Peter fell through too, crashing onto Mike before throwing himself back to sit and pull Mike up to do so, as well.

Mike flicked back his wave of hair from his eye to regard Peter. “Didn’t you secure the beds, and especially the gap? Yeah. That’s a dumb question.”

“What? How?” Peter queried, struggling to get to his knees.

“Hey, are you guys wrestling?” came Micky’s voice from the door, making them both jump. The door was immediately rattled, wobbling in its frame. “Why is the door locked? _I_ wanna play.”

“You don’t,” Mike muttered. “At least, he _really_ hoped not. “We’re not wrestling.” He gestured to Peter to say something, to think of something, but the sonofa— only smirked. “Micky, babe, go talk to Davy about it, huh?”

“What?” came from Micky and Peter.

“About what we’re doing,” Mike called. “He’s English,” he added to Peter, shrugging.

“Oh. I thought you meant because of his theater background,” Peter replied, the smirk not fixing to depart anytime soon.

“Ah. That would have made more sense.” Mike nodded.

“And now I’m thinking you’re matchmaking,” Peter said.

“What in the _world_?”

“Davy’s asleep. _Guys?_ ” came in a whine from without, Micky having seemingly gone down to his new room and come back again.

“Look, tomorrow we’ll all talk about it, okay?” Mike tacked on the last word as much as for Peter as for Micky. Peter shrugged. But they had no choice, really.

“Not really. I just don’t get it.” Micky kicked at the door.

“Yeah, well, neither am I,” Mike muttered.

“Are _we_ ,” Peter corrected.

“Please, babe? I promise tomorrow it’ll all make sense,” Mike cajoled when the door handle rattled again.

“ _Fine!_ ” Micky thumped down the stairs, his tone saying it was anything but.

Mike weighed up intervening in any possible damage a bored and lonely Micky could inflict on the pad or Davy against Peter rising to his feet and pushing the beds together again. Peter won. D’uh.

“And tomorrow, _I’ll_ take charge of the bed,” Mike promised. “I’ll get some cable ties, couple of long straps—”

“Oh yeah?” Peter rubbed his hands together. “Is that some sort of Texas thing? Does it have a name?”

It took Mike long minutes to calm down after that.

“Where were we?” he said, lying down carefully and patting the bed for Peter to come join him. “Well, I guess we’d better start over. Lie back—”

“And think of Connecticut?” Peter threw in.

“Damn it, shotgun!” Mike said, when his eyes had stopped streaming and he’d stopped spluttering. “I’m beginning to think you’re delaying because you’re as skittish about this as—”

Peter stretching out on top of him and kissing him removed any thoughts Mike had about Peter being nervous. He wasn’t at all. He was eager. And _skilled_.


	6. Chapter Six

Peter surrounded him, submerging Mike under the heat of Peter’s body on top of his, Peter’s hand caging Mike, holding him in place to take Peter’s kisses and for Peter to feather his thumb across Mike’s evening stubble. Peter nibbled at each lip in turn, licking them after to open them, insinuating his tongue inside. The kiss he initiated was searching and deep, soft glides of his tongue touching every nerve in the sensitive flesh of Mike’s mouth, and it was the start of long, slow, endless kissing.

He seemed to be asking Mike to copy him, especially when they shifted onto their sides, their bodies still tangled. And so Mike did, rolling on top of Peter to take over, and Peter moaned, or the noise could have come from Mike. The kisses continued, but eased somewhat, the demanding and the telling softening to an asking and an answering. A perfect, unforced and mutual mapping out of uncharted territory.

Pulling reluctantly away, Mike stared down at Peter. The beautiful boy of earlier, temptation personified, his full, sweet lips in a half-pout as he’d sat reading, wreathed in aromatic smoke, now lay sprawled, a lot less pristine, swollen-lipped, his eyelids at half-mast, a sheen of sweat and a soft tinge of red covering all of his flesh that was visible. It was just as or even more alluring. Mike couldn’t decide.

But damn, what Mike did know was that it made him yearn to see Peter even more debauched-looking still, or, even better, to totally debauch him, leave him sweaty-haired and flushed a deep hectic pink, totally fucked-out from taking Mike’s cock. He’d writhe so beautifully on it. Mike could see it as if getting a flash-forward into the future.

Peter fingered the whisker burn around his lips and chin. “You made your mark.”

“I…” _No._ He wouldn’t pretend, wouldn’t tame himself down. Peter would get all of him. “It looks good on you. You look good like that.” He waited for Peter’s reaction, and it came in the form of a twist of his lips. “You like it.” Peter didn’t deny it. Mike stroked over the redness his stubble had left on Peter. “I like it,” he confessed. “I like seeing my mark on you.”

“Go on?” Peter prompted when, despite Mike’s resolution, his words stuck in his throat.

“I like you carrying my mark. Like, a mark someplace where no one can see. Only me.”

The smile this provoked from Peter was complex and layered. He raised himself on one elbow. “That does not mean I’ll be getting a tattoo.”

“Aww. Pity.” Mike slumped onto his back. “Not even an itty-bitty one of my initials? Fine. We can always carve on a tree, instead.”

“I would never harm a tree.”

“Not even for me?”

“Nice rhyme. You should write that down.” Peter indicated Mike’s bedside table, with its notebook. “Well, I might. Depends what we’ve done there.”

Mike liked that idea, and that Peter would forego his generally hippy principles in that way. What sacrifice could he make for Peter? _Oh yeah._ _Restore unto Peter what is Peter’s._ Those monstrous plaid pants. He failed to get his hand to his mouth quickly enough to hide his amusement. “Just thinking about a pair of pants,” he said, before Peter could ask.

“Oh?” Peter looked down at their naked bodies. “Is this—”

“No!” The thought of Peter covering up that delectable golden body before Mike had feasted his fill? Again, Mike knew that with this partner—and God, if his heart didn’t twist at all the possible meanings lying within that word—he’d have to give deep and true of himself. As much as he could. And this would serve in lieu of things he couldn’t say. “I have to tell you something. I guess it’s by way of a confession. A closet confession?”

“I’m intrigued. Go on?”

Mike fought the squirm that deep voice wanted to induce in him. “Closet as in clothes. Those goddamn circus-clown pants. Your brown plaid ones. You can never find them ’cause I hid ’em. Buried ’em real deep at the back of a shelf and piled stuff on. I’m sorry. I’ll retrieve them tomorrow, so you can wear them.”

“Wow.” Peter blinked and rolled his head around. “I hadn’t missed them in an age. Hmm. When you said a confession about clothes, I thought it was going to be about my orange sweater, which ‘shrank when it got washed too hot’.”

“Oh yeah. No, that was all of us. Oh, come on! It gave you man breasts, Pete! We had a meeting about it. Okay, so it was while you were out. But you can read the minutes and see the group decision voted on. Now, don’t take on. We’ll knit you another. With less boob space.”

Peter laughed, so loudly Mike worried Micky would be back up. Peter rolled his neck again, then rubbed his shoulder. “I got jolted when we fell,” he explained, indicating the beds.

“Can I do anything?” Mike asked, guilty.

“I guess.” Peter scooted over, leaving Mike missing his warmth, to twist and stretch then stand, searching in his bedside cabinet. “I thought I had baby oil,” he said, returning empty handed.

“I’m not even going to ask.” Even if Mike wanted to. He caught Peter’s smirk though. “Want me to…”

Peter nodded, so Mike pushed the pillow aside to sit flush against the headboard, making a space between his legs for Peter. Even without oil, it was possible to massage his thumbs into the base of Peter’s neck, after first scratching his cheek across it and into the side, just to make Peter squirm then push back into it. Peter’s skin thrummed under Mike’s face and hands, buzzing with nerves and sinews and life, smooth and malleable with youth, but firmer and less fragile than a woman’s. His taste was thicker. Muskier. _Male._

Remembering Peter’s foot rub of earlier had him smiling into Peter’s neck, under his hair, which of course made him drop a kiss there, Peter rubbing the back of his head onto the top of Mike’s in response. He focused on pressing little circles into Peter’s flesh rather than think about the effect Peter had on _his_ flesh, a certain area of which was pressed up against Peter, its presence making itself more and more known as each minute went by. And when Mike dug into a knot in Peter’s upper back, Peter’s groan had Mike’s cock jumping to attention.

“I like your hands on me,” Peter said, his words rumbling through Mike.

“Yeah? Show me.”

He dropped his hands to Peter’s sides and Peter brought them around for Mike to take his first touch of Peter, to feel Peter’s hot, heavy hardness, learn his cock’s suppleness, its spring, its strength. And Mike approved of every inch.

“ _Big Peter_ ,” he murmured, the silly nickname more than apt now, given Peter’s girth and length, for which Mike needed two hands. But maybe the name had been given because it was fitting? Which of them had coined it, anyhow? His hands stilled at the thought that Micky or Davy had seen Peter naked and aroused.

Peter’s thigh and stomach muscles were bunching in response to Mike’s touch and the cessation of the contact. A slight wetness met Mike’s hand now. He couldn’t stop himself stroking the length of the heavy vein pulsing with arousal, tracing it all the way to the engorged head of Peter’s cock, right to the bead of fluid sitting pretty on the slit. Rubbing the precum over the head made Peter’s cock jump in Mike’s hands. When another bubble of liquid seeped from the slit, Mike smeared it over his thumb and brought it to his mouth to taste.

“You’ve…” Peter cleared his throat. “You’ve done this before?”

“Pete, if I had, you wouldn’t be asking. Not to boast, but I _guarantee_ you’d remember.”

“I meant— ahhhh, _God_!”

Peter’s attempt at clarification ended when Mike stroked him in a strong up-and-down motion, spreading the precum to make the skin move easily, which in turn made Peter’s shaft harden still further in Mike’s hand.

“That is just _mouth-watering_ ,” Mike breathed in Peter’s ear.

Peter pulled gently away to turn to Mike, his gaze sliding to Mike's cock, and his mouth dropped open. “And that’s… _eye-_ watering. _Fuck_.” With difficulty, he tore his gaze free to look Mike in the face. “Really?”

Mike shrugged, trying for an _aww-shucks_ expression.

“ _Seriously?_ Like, all the time?”

Mike was shallow enough to relish the awe in Peter’s tone. “Pretty much all the time you’re around,” he admitted. “Especially on stage or rehearsal with you wriggling around in your tight pants, swiveling your hips as you…” He caught Peter’s look. “Oh, god _damm_ it. You little slut! It was all on purpose? I just thought it was getting worse. Huh, or better. And all the time you were trying to tell me something?”

“I was about ready to draw you a map,” Peter muttered.

Mike grinned, stroking Peter’s erection again. “Well, no need to add the compass points, seeing as how you’re pointing due north there, babe. And I don’t need directions.” He proved his words with a pounce—his turn this time—pinning Peter flat underneath him. It lasted only scant seconds—Peter twisted free and rolled away, to sit up.

“Where the hell d’you think you’re going?” Mike rasped.

“The incense has burned down. Going to light another stick.” Peter pointed.

“Incense?” _More like incensed._ Mike yanked at Peter. “Get back here,” he ordered. “You don’t just wander off like that when I’m fixin’ to start. Huh, I ought to chain you to the bed.”

“Yeah?”

_Yeah._ God, he could see it, Peter, naked, like he was now, but in broad daylight, and a short metal-links chain around one slim ankle tying him to one leg of the bed, keeping him there, in place. And his place was with his head in Mike’s lap, Mike petting him lazily as Peter used those full, strong lips and talented throat to pleasure him. Nice and slow, keeping Mike on the edge for hours, making him moan long and loud, until he couldn’t take any more and his tight grip in Peter’s hair indicated Peter should speed up, should suck tighter and harder, should bring him off.

“ _Yeah,_ ” he echoed, knowing Peter shared this fantasy, was sharing it now. He took Peter’s arms and pulled them over his head. “Grab on to there,” he ordered, waiting until Peter held on to the lowest rail of the metal headboard. “I like to bite,” he warned. “Is that gonna be a problem?”

“No _-oo_!” Peter’s reply was half assent, half reaction to Mike nipping his neck. It was amazing, the variety of sounds he made when Mike bit and sucked his way down. Mike grinned into Peter’s chest on finding that Peter had sensitive nipples. Very sensitive. Beautifully sensitive. He scraped his chin along Peter’s toned pecs, then nuzzled into Peter’s chest hair, surprising a snuffled giggle from Peter. Mike loved that sound. Always had.

He took his time, learning all of Peter’s textures and tastes, all his salt and musk. He saved his biggest bite for Peter’s hipbone, just at one side of his vee of muscles, biting down tight and sucking, making Peter cry out and his body arch. “Told you I want my mark on you,” Mike said. “But I’ll let you mark me, when it’s your turn. If you’re good.”

“I’m _very_ good,” Peter gasped. He was leaking a lot now, and his hips were starting a familiar humping.

Mike knew it was time. He rolled on top of Peter and slotted them together, to slowly rub his cock against Peter's. That wasn’t enough, and Peter’s body was too slippery with sweat to stay in the right place. Mike kissed him, one hand cupping his face, rendering him still, and used his dominant hand to help them receive the sweetest, sharpest sensations. Again, Peter was no passive party, instead thrusting those talented hips of his so their shafts rubbed first slowly, then faster. And Jesus, between Mike’s cock on Peter’s and Peter’s against Mike’s hand, the pressure on the ultra-sensitive nerves on the undersides of their shafts was perfect.

They were both so aroused, so primed, it didn’t take them long to reach quick, simultaneous climaxes, kissing sloppily and messily right through them, to the very finish, when the jerk Peter’s body gave nearly threw Mike off him and Mike failed to catch Peter’s long, loud moan in his mouth. Mike collapsed onto Peter, taking his own weight as much as he could over that sweat-slippery body, his heart racing right on top of the crazy-fast thunder of Peter’s. The world was held at bay, whited out for long minutes, and crept back in slowly as their pulses climbed down to normal.

When Mike could move, he slipped off Peter and stretched to lie on his side, facing him and taking Peter’s hand with him, clasped in his. He never wanted to let it go. He grabbed Peter’s face with his free hand and turned it to drop a last kiss on his lips. Peter deserved that tiny tenderness, and more.

“Well, _hell,_ Peter.” He blew Peter’s bangs from his eyes for him. “If you make a noise like that from a quick rut, what in the world are you gonna sound like when I fuck you?”


	7. Chapter Seven

Peter closed the gap, so he was nose to nose with Mike. “And who says you get to fuck me?”

“I do. You know, you’re awful mouthy for someone covered in my cum.” Mike ignored that his abdomen was splattered with Peter’s, too. “I can see I’m gonna have to smack the sass outta that ass before I tap it.”

Peter blinked. “And what do I say then when the others ask about the noise?”

“Or ask why you can’t sit down or walk straight the next day? The truth.” Mike nodded. “That I had to spank your ass hard before fucking it harder. Like you wanted. Like you _needed_ ,” he added, still trying to get a read on Peter.

Peter closed his eyes. Mike had never been so glad that they were all, via some weird and wonderful wizardry or witchcraft or who the fuck knew what, able to share fantasies. Because this one? It was the best yet, and just for the two of them.

“Well, they do say the truth will set you free,” Peter murmured. His face firmed, as much as Peter’s face could. “But you should know I’m not going to bottom every time. I want to top too.”

“So what do we do? Choose fingers?”

Peter laughed. “I guess it’ll come naturally.”

Mike smirked, dabbing his fingers in their mixed release pooling on Peter’s chest. “Just did, shotgun. Just did. And talking of, we should clean up. No”—he held Peter flat with one hand—“you stay there. Don’t want you jumping up and running off someplace.”

“Don’t think I could if I wanted to,” Peter muttered, his voice slow and his eyes drowsy.

“I’ll take care of you.” Mike promised, a catch in his throat at how true that vow was. He stood and made for the bathroom, his movements slow and languid. And that was just from a quick tup, as he’d told Peter. What would Mike be like after making love to Pete? Because it would be making love, he knew. Long, slow and tender. Preparing Peter, who Mike didn’t think had gone all the way…that way, although he’d fooled about some with guys, perhaps even one or more of the other two, if Mike’s suspicions were correct. He—

“ _Mike?_ ” The alarm in Peter’s voice stopped Mike’s musings dead and had him running from the bathroom, his clean-up abandoned.

“A stone!” Peter sat up and pointed at the floor. “Someone just threw a stone through the window, look!”

 _Shit. Fuck. Now? Of fucking course._ “A stone, you say? Well, good job the window was open, huh? Here.” He brought the damp facecloth to Peter. “Clean up.” He indicated Peter’s torso and while Peter was swiping at himself, Mike grabbed the small rock and threw it back out. He closed the window. “There. Gone.”

“What? You could have hit someone! Or someone might—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Was it Micky? Is he angry with us?”

“Well, I guess he could be. Really, don’t worry about it.”

“But it could have hit you. Look, it landed where your bed was.”

“But it didn’t. No harm done.” Except, being upset about that would have been a good excuse. _Damn._ Mike sat on the bed. “Look, you’re tired. Lie down. Or is it really bothering you?”

“Well, I’m not as nonchalant about it as you seem to be.” Peter eyed him.

“Okay. So here’s what we’ll do. You get some rest and I’ll take a look around, see if I can spot anything.”

“No, Michael! What if—”

“Look, it’ll set your mind at ease, and I won’t be long. I’ll just take a quick gander, check the perimeter…” He was dressing as he spoke. He hated framing this as if it were for Peter’s sake, but he hadn’t expected this and had no plan. _Stupid._

“I still don’t think—”

“Hey, I’ll be back before you miss me.” Mike winked.

“ _Mike._ ”

He halted at the door at Peter’s tone, his back stiffening.

“Is everything…all right?”

Mike turned. “Oh, what is this ‘is everything all’… Of course!” His heart thumped hard once, twice. Peter wasn’t stupid. “Look, just cool it and quit your fussing. Okay, it was a stone, but, ya know, that doesn’t mean you gotta go makin’ things a stone drag.”

And he was gone.

 

 _A stone drag_? Peter blinked furiously in the empty room. He’d never imagined Michael would talk to him like that, not after what they’d shared. And…Mike _never_ talked to him like that. Something wasn’t right. Which meant…something was wrong. And Mike was facing it alone. He’d told Peter to get some rest. To stay there. But Peter hadn’t promised and what…if he wasn’t Peter? Micky’s words of earlier about following people in disguise rang in Peter’s ears. And wait, Mike had flinched then, reacted like a nerve had been touched. _Huh._

Mind made up, Peter jumped out of bed and snatched up his pajamas, not bothering to put them on. He grabbed his flashlight from his nightstand drawer and clicked off the bedside light, then crept from the room and down the stairs. In the clothes closet, he pawed through the racks, considering and rejecting a park attendant uniform. It had the bag and the spiked stick, so he could make out he was on the night shift, cleaning up the beach, but any kind of uniform would have any late nighters there yelling “Pig,” and “Narc,” after him, which might make Mike turn around and spot him.

It took Peter only seconds to hustle into a preppy-looking letterman’s sweater, and pants that put him in mind of cricket, or golf, or horse polo or something. He crammed a checked flat cap—a sort of Swinging London thing Davy used to wear until they broke him of the habit—on, shoving his bangs under the brim to hide them, and jammed his feet into white gym shoes.

The side door was the first Peter tried, and it was unlocked, meaning Mike had probably gone that way. Peter took a peek, couldn’t see anything, so tiptoed through. Left or right? Around to the front, streetside, or back, beachside? He didn’t want to go one way and meet Mike coming back the opposite way—if Mike was really doing a circuit of the pad. The stone had been thrown in from the back, so…that way.

The visibility was fine; he didn’t need to shine his flashlight. Within seconds he made out a tall form, one that had eased itself down the rocks and was almost at the bottom of the dunes, right on the sand. Taking an educated gamble that it was Mike, Peter followed. He kept as much of a distance as he could and feel confident he wouldn’t lose his quarry. Whatever Mike was up to, it didn’t involve checking around the outside of their house. He wasn’t searching. He looked like he knew where he was going.

Mike turned left, not right, away from the spaces where even now, a couple of small groups were sitting around their dying fires. Peter frowned. Looked like Mike was heading for the rocks, down along the way? Make-out Rocks, Davy and Micky—and most people—called them. A series of hollows and small almost-caves, ensuring some privacy.

Mike walked past two or three, slower now, and reached one that seemed the right one. Peter ducked back behind the start of the outcrop and counted out four beats, then crept forward slowly, taking shelter in each hollow as he reached it. They were all empty, of course. The beach itself was private and dark enough at this time; no need for this cover too.

 _This is stupid. Pathetic._ Mike had the right to go take a stroll on the beach whenever he chose. Peter didn’t have the right to follow him and bother him. Mike was right. He was a drag. He walked to the mouth of his cave, about to leave, but then shot back in. Someone was approaching the rocks, from the opposite side to the one Peter and Mike had approached from. That person also stopped at the hollow Mike had gone into.

 _Who—_ Peter inched forward and turned left, creeping closer to his target, heart beating madly. He didn’t go right up to the couple, but was near enough to hear a husky Texan accent say, “Honey,” and to hear a more neutral New York-tinged and just as male voice reply “Nez.” The short word seemed to quiver with emotion.

Peter stuffed his hand in his mouth in case any reaction escaped, particularly when Mike rasped, “So. You’re all fired up again, huh?”

Holding his breath, Peter retraced his steps. He shouldn’t be there. Couldn’t. He felt jagged and spiky, all the delicious, melting vibes of earlier gone. He didn’t think he breathed properly until he got back to the pad. His brain whirred. There could be a hundred and one explanations for what he’d seen and heard. The scenarios could fill a book. _A trilogy_ , he thought, stripping off his clothes and scrambling into his pajamas. _The most likely is—_

“What’s going on?”

“Micky!” Peter spun around, clutching his heart. “Don’t _do_ that. Nothing.”

“You said you’d tell me tomorrow. It’s tomorrow now,” Micky insisted.

“Mike said that. Not me.” Peter led Micky from the clothes room, thinking fast. “And he was being like that to get you to cool it, you know? To leave it?”

“What? Peter, all these changes…” Micky pointed to his new room, then his old one. “I don’t get it.”

“Look there’s nothing to tell or to get.” Peter almost choked on the words. Was saying them making it true, wishing the Michaelandhim, PeterandMichael away before it grew? Before it even took root?

“So why make us change rooms?”

Micky needed an answer. He loved stirring things up but needed his bedrock a constant. “Oh, Mike hasn’t been sleeping well.”

“And? What’s new?”

“Yeah.” Peter turned Micky around and rubbed his shoulders, trying not to remember earlier, when he’d been on the receiving end of a similar massage. “We thought the change would do him good. I’m a light sleeper. I’ll wake up, keep him company. Talk. Relax him.” He rubbed his thumbs up Micky’s nape. “Maybe play cards, or whatever. So he can feel a bit easier.”

“Oh.” Micky looked up. “So that—”

“Are you okay with Davy snoring?” Peter cut Micky off. “There’s some earplugs in the All Sorts cupboard. I’ll get them for you. Come on.” He fished out a sealed packet from the almost-medical-supply box they kept there.

“That’s a good idea!” Micky took them.

“Come on. Let’s settle you down.” He walked Micky to his new room and waited for him to lie down in bed, then scratched small circles into his temples, under his curls. Micky purred.

“Los Angeles leopard and a Texas wildcat,” Peter murmured

“I can’t hear you,” Micky mouthed. “These work great. You’re smart, Pete.”

 _Am I? I don’t think so._ Seeing Micky’s eyes closing, Peter slipped from the room and up to his. Despite his churning thoughts, he was asleep before Mike returned, and the dip of the bed when Mike got in didn’t wake him because Peter had pulled the beds apart a little, widening the gap between them. But Mike was the first thing he saw when he woke. Peter made sure he made noise, getting out of bed.

“Morning,” he called, as soon as Mike stirred. “I didn’t hear you come in. Were you out long? Go to a bar or something?”

“What? Hardly.”

“Did you bump into some friends?”

“At that time of night?”

Peter sat on the edge of his bed. “Well, you must have been out for ages.”

“Yeah. No. Sorry.” Mike sighed and sat up, not looking at Peter. “It, things…got a bit…”

“Much. All of it. This.” Peter nodded. He’d rehearsed this, while waiting alone. “In fact, I think we should cool it a little.”

“It? This?”

Any other time, Mike imitating a parrot, like Micky could, might have been amusing.

“Slow down a little. There’s no need to rush. Take it easy. Not explain to Micky and Davy.” Peter tacked that on.

“But Micky’ll be asking?”

“I’ll stall him. He’ll listen to me if I say something.”

“If…that’s what you want.” Mike swallowed.

It looked as if he were about to say more. Peter gave him a few seconds, but nothing came. “It’s best.” He nodded. “Best for now.” _Until you finish with the other guy or with me._ Because he knew he’d never quit Mike. Look at him, pathetically clinging on, waiting, hoping, spinning dreams out of the fact that yesterday had been so perfect, so shining and golden, and their coming together so seamless and sweet that it had to mean something. It had meant everything to Peter, but, seemingly, not to Mike. Mike who already had his _honey_ elsewhere.

 


	8. Chapter Eight

“Pete—Peter, is everything…cool?” Mike caught his hand when Peter headed for the john.

“Cool? Well, we’ve agreed to cool it, so I guess so?” He shrugged, glad he’d gone to bed in boxer-briefs. It had only just started but he could tell this wasn’t a conversation to have wearing silly pajamas. He wondered if Mike was wearing underwear too.

“I didn’t mean… Look, do you have regrets? About what we did?”

“About _what we_ _did_?” Peter burned with incredulity. “ _No!_ Of course not.”

“So it was…okay?”

“It was.” _Perfect_ , he didn’t add. “Didn’t you think so?”

“Yes.”

“ _Tub_ ,” muttered Peter. Because he could see it coming, could read it, like a subtitle, and as he was facing Mike, not alongside him, it was backward for him. He hated how it loomed. So, he helped bring it forth. “Do _you_ have regrets?”

“Not one. But.”

And there was the word he’d seen coming. Right way round now. Better out than in.

“Things between us…” Mike scratched his stubble. “I wasn’t expecting them. This. So I wasn’t prepared. I’m _not_ prepared, you know?”

“No. I don’t know. This isn’t making much sense to me. Maybe I’m too dumb.”

“That’s one thing you’re not. I won’t have that kinda talk.” Mike tugged him to sit and picked at a thread on the sheet.

Peter tried. “When you say you weren’t prepared, are you saying I sprang things on you? Forced things?” _Forced you?_ He didn’t believe Mike could be forced into anything.

“ _No_ , I’m not sayin’ that. Just that there’s…”

“What?” When Mike remained silent, Peter tried another tack. “I thought you were as open to things as I was. That you wanted to be in an intimate relationship with me.” God, he did not want to do this. It was like hitting a bruise.

 “Yeah, I am. And yeah, I do. But.”

Peter _hated_ that word.

“Just, I have other, well, obligations, I guess. In my life.”

“So do we all. Working on our music, getting gigs, having to work jobs when we need the money?”

Mike bunched the sheet in his fist.

“Oh. If you mean more personal things, I guess you should have sorted through them, or sorted them out, before you, well, before we…” Peter swallowed, emotions battling it out in him. “So, it’s good to have cooled it, right, until you’ve worked through your ‘obligations’. Whatever they are.”

Mike remained _more_ silent. Of course.

“Will you?” Peter prodded.

“I…yeah. I’m…” Mike’s turn to shrug.

“So, you know what I’m going to do? Stop fussing, like you said, so you don’t have to tell me to quit it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need the john.”

Was that good? A calm, collected handling of the situation? He had no idea. But it sure sounded like Mike wanted him, Peter, more than the other guy he was involved with, and would bring things with this other guy to an end? The tear Peter rubbed from his eye was more angry than sad.

_I feel deceived. Used_ , Peter silently told his reflection. _Mike should have said he wasn’t free._ But then again maybe Peter shouldn’t have schemed and tempted and prodded and chipped away at Mike until he’d, well, caved in. _But still Mike shouldn’t have… So we’re both at fault?_ He shrugged at mirror-Peter. Mike and he weren’t the best at discussing their personal feelings. Their history proved that. Maybe they needed to talk things through. But Peter was afraid that doing so, that “fussin’” would talk things away.

And to have to dissect and analyse now, when his body was still sated after that shared climax and his eyes still held satisfaction in their depths and a smile wanted to curve his mouth… Today should have been all of that, open and easy, languid and slow, shining and golden. Instead all that was slapped away, and everything was stringy and mean and buzzing like angry bees. Saturday had turned into Sunday, all right.

Whoever the other guy was, he’d robbed Peter—and MichaelandPeter—of the languid ease of the morning after, of a slow, sweet start to their new relationship. Or, no, maybe _Michael_ had.

_Quite fussing. Don’t be a drag_ , Peter told himself. _Go start the day._ With a last look in the mirror, he left the tiny bathroom, tying his robe.

“I’ll put the coffee on,” he said, not looking at Mike. Mike usually did that while Peter did yoga and meditated, but he didn’t think he’d be doing either this morning. It was a little later than he usually rose, anyway. Hardly surprising. “Do you want first shower, while I see what we have for breakfast?”

“Thanks. Be down in a minute, babe.”

But Mike was still upstairs by the time the coffee was underway, so, abandoning any thought of making breakfast, Peter selfishly, deliberately, took the first bathroom slot.

 

_Peter’s mighty sore. Miffed,_ Mike pondered. He guessed it was because of the way he’d run out last night. Ran out and stayed out a little bit. But Mike had tried to apologize and explain, hadn’t he?  Oh, for the love of the Lord. He and Peter were guys. Not chicks with dicks. They didn’t tiptoe around fretting over after every little shift in tone or…complete difference in behaviour.

Because last night, well, all of yesterday since the sun deck, had been an unexpected and wonderful; no, wonder-filled, present. Much better than Christmas or birthdays. And it hadn’t felt like any kind of mirage that would waver itself away when he took his eye off it. Hadn’t given the impression it came with a date stamp, yet it seemed the feelings, the warmth, had cooled. _I’ve cooled it_ , Peter had said. If Mike told him, would he… But that was impossible. It wasn’t his call, for one thing. And for another, he didn’t want anyone, least of all people he loved, to know what he’d done. Was doing, he remembered, his heart sinking.

He allowed himself a quick groan into his pillow and then rolled off the bed, ready for whatever the day threw at him. The phone started ringing as he descended the helter-skelter stairs. Out of habit, he sped up to get it. He usually answered the phone. Peter, fresh from the shower, beat him to it, throwing him a look that Mike could only peg as _odd_.

“No, he’s not up yet. May I take a message?” Peter said into the receiver, then paused to listen. “Oh, hi there, Lola. This is Peter, his bandmate. We met at there too. The bassist. The one with…? Huh, yeah, I guess it is.”

He smiled, stroking his smooth hair. Chicks _really_ dug it. Mike envied him that shining silk crowning glory that nothing, not sand-scattering wind or sea water, hurt. Peter was about due for a trim, too. “I’m no Davy Jones, though,” Peter added.

Mike grinned. Davy had been initially amused but soon driven crazy by their joke. He poured himself coffee and checked if the water was hot enough for Peter’s tea.

“Sure. Does he have the number? One second.” Peter scrabbled for the message pad and pen. “Yup. Got it.”

Mike shook his head. Davy must be damn good. Even once it had ended—usually not long after it had started—they tended to come back for more.

“Say, who’s on next week? Didn’t you have some English band booked for a residency? Oh yeah, that’s them. Well, you’d know. No, nothing? Yes, I can keep a secret. I guess.” He laughed, then caught Mike’s eye and stopped.

“Here in LA? Oh, London? You mean they never left, never got their plane? Why? Oh.” Peter twiddled the phone cord around a finger. “That’s too bad. For them and all of you at the Duke Box.”

Mike’s hand trembled as he tipped water into Peter’s mug. He put the teakettle down. His heart thudded, then sat out for a beat or two. He turned enough to catch Peter’s words, but Peter was silent, absorbing what Lola was saying.

Peter freed his finger and used it to push his hair from his eyes. “Well. Wow. I don’t… Hey, Lola, how about you explain this to Mike? He’s the band leader and he’ll understand it all much better. I’ll get Davy to call— Mike. The guitarist. The one with the ha—all the _legs_? Is that what…” He glanced at Mike’s legs, or the section visible below his gown. “Erm…just one second…”

He covered the speaker and beckoned Mike closer. Mike took a gulp of much-needed, if too-hot coffee and crossed to put Peter’s mug of tea down on the telephone table for him. “Thank you. This is Lola, DJ from—”

“The Duke Box on the Strip, toward Doheny. Got that.”

“She does office stuff there too? I didn’t know. Anyway, the Warm Embrace are booked to play there next week. But there was some problem with their carry-on luggage at London airport? They’re still there, being questioned…”

Mike raised an eyebrow. He could imagine what sort of… _problem_ the group had been… _carrying_.

“So there’s a last-minute vacancy. Even the owner doesn’t know yet.” Peter took up the phone again. “Lola, so you wanted to tell Davy in advance, give him a head’s-up?” His forehead furrowed.

“She either wants to problem-solve at the workplace, leading to a raise, or wants an in with Davy,” Mike muttered.

“Because he’s English, like the group?” Peter repeated. His lips twitched. _“Yeah, she wants an in with Davy,”_ he mouthed.

They shared a smile, and it was like nothing awkward had happened. For a moment. Tearing his gaze away, Peter stood for Mike to take his place on the stool and passed him the phone, making sure their fingers didn’t touch as he did so.

“Hey there, Miss Lola. Mike here. The guitarist. I’m usually known as the one with the hat?” Easy recognition for him and the band in a sea of competition was partly why he wore it. It also served to cut the ground away from under people who would have made some wisecrack about how a Texan should be wearin’ a hat. That’d gotten old _real_ quick in LA. “But seems I’m the one with the legs?”

“Also known as tall, dark, and Texan,” Lola said.

“Really? Lord have mercy.” He could have predicted the next question. “No, ma’am, Davy is not seeing anyone.”

“This morning,” Pete muttered from around his mug of tea. “Although the day _is_ still young.”

Mike signalled to him to quit it, to let him listen and answer. “And you’re letting Davy know about the no-show because…” His eyebrows rose at her reply.

“What?” Peter prodded.

_“Because we can come down and persuade Paul Duke to let us fill in,”_   he mouthed to Peter.

“What? Mike, the Embrace’s style is completely different—”

He calmed Peter by running a hand up the back of his leg from his calf to the hem of those cut-off shorts. Peter fresh from the shower was delicious, innocent and young, somehow. Peter leaned in to Mike’s touch, then turned away. The loss of their connection cut through Mike.

“Is Mr. Duke around on a Sunday?” he asked Lola, answering his own stupid question with, “Well, I guess he will be today, when you call him with the news.” He thought quickly. “Or, if he’s coming in anyway, maybe don’t let him know until he gets there?”

She liked that.

“Two, you say? Sure, Lola, we’ll be there. With Davy, of course. Who’ll call you before that and be very grateful to you. As will we all.” He paused to see if she hinted at receiving some kind of fee or commission for her efforts, but seemed that wasn’t on her mind. “Thanks again and see you soon.” He replaced the phone and stood.

“Mike, I don’t think—” Peter started.

“What is this ‘don’t think’—it’s a great idea!” He wondered if he sounded as phony to Peter as he did to himself. “Look, we need to make a group decision, so we need to call a meeting.”

“Which means we need to get Micky up first,” Peter reminded him.

“Right. So you find the bullhorn and I’ll get the soda syphon.”

“I’ll see if we have enough OJ for his cereal, put him in a better mood after that.” Peter opened the icebox.

“Check there’s bread? Davy will need toast for that revolting black spread of his.” Mike shuddered. He drained his first cup of coffee. “I’ll go shower and dress.”

He was the band leader. He needed all the armor he could don to appear as such. He also needed the thinking time to gather every bit of ammunition he could muster in his arsenal to persuade the other three to agree to this. He couldn’t fail. Not when they had to be at the Duke Box later that night.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter veered into comedy. Apologies in advance.

Micky pushed his chair back from the meeting table with a screech of wood on stone and folded his arms. “Man, I just don’t know you do it.”

Davy blew on his perfectly manicured nails and polished them on his shirt. “It’s the accent.”

“It is not. That doesn’t do squat. Remember when I spoke in an English accent for a whole evening?”

“Erm, you _really_ didn’t.” Davy laughed. “As I told you at the time, you sounded like a drunker and drunker Australian.”

“He behaved like one too.”

Micky acknowledged Mike’s bad joke with a _ba-dum-tish_ sting. “But, Davy, babe, ya gotta tell me…”

“You really want to know? I might be persuaded to tell you if I had a refill.” Davy waggled the cup he’d been allowed to bring to the table in recognition that the occasion was due to him.

Micky snatched it from him and was back with it filled in almost the same moment.

Davy peered into its dark-brown depths. “And what have we forgotten?” he chided.

“Micky—”

Peter’s attempt to stop Micky being Davy’s house boy was in vain—Micky ran to add milk to Davy’s drink. Peter eyed Mike. “Shouldn’t you be calling this meeting to order?”

Peter’s question was fair, but Mike was glad Micky was happy again. And distracted. “I kinda wanna hear this,” he admitted.

“So.” Davy took a sip of his tea. “Oh. Sugar factory on strike, is it?”

“Don’t push it, or Micky,” Peter warned.

He always looked out for Micky, and Mickey for him. If Mike had to bet which of the other guys Peter had fooled around with, his money would be on Micky. Okay, it might be more logical to assume Davy, with them having shared a room all that time, but there was just something about the way Peter and Micky interacted… Mike didn’t know how he felt about that. Didn’t…want to know.

“So you want to know the secret to my success with birds. Chicks,” Davy translated.

“Uh-huh.” Micky nodded like a papier-mâché bobblehead doll.

“It’s the eyes.”

“ _What?_ ” came from at least two of them in reply.

“Stare into them. Go on.” Davy leaned forward for Micky to do so.

“Man, I don’t know. I’m a little bit afraid to, just in case.” Micky vibrated in his seat, leaning forward but raising his hand to cover his eyes.

“Davy, I didn’t think your eyes are _that_ special.” Mike had to intervene. For Mick’s sake, if nothing else.

“Oh, but they are. I can make them twinkle, you see, and when I lock eyes with someone, it makes their eyes sparkle, too. Creates this mystical bond. Makes them putty in my hands.” Davy smirked. “Micky, take a good look.”

Micky did, staring hard, his eyes opening wide and round and his mouth going slack. “Oh, wow.” He swallowed, his head inching nearer and nearer to Davy’s, his lips puckering up. “I… Are my eyes twinkling? Can someone tell me? Because I feel drawn to Davy. Really. Like I wanna—”

The horrible noise that drowned him out was Peter sounding the airhorn. Sounding it close to Micky.

“If you’ve finished, how about the meeting we’re supposedly in the middle of?” he enquired.

“Spoilsport.” Davy finished his tea. “Doesn’t the condemned man get the right to a hearty last laugh?”

“What?” Mike didn’t get it.

“Before you pimp me out to this dolly bird. The things you make me do for the group.” Davy shook his head.

“Babe, we would never expect you to do anything you don’t wanna!”

“Oh, he wanna, all right,” Micky assured Mike.

“To be clear, no one is forcing _you_ to make a whore of yourself.”

“ _Pete!_ ” Mike protested. Peter’s tone, and that look, was really—

“Yeah, he does that anyway, without being asked. Oh, not saying I’m not envious,” Micky added. “But, pimping you out…” A leer took over his face and he raked his hands through his hair, pushing it back from his face.

Davy banged his hand down on the table top. “Micky, if it’s all the same to you, could you bloody stop imagining yourself in a fur-trimmed coat and fedora hat—especially the fedora hat—and carrying a cane with a diamond top? Oh, and _especially_ stop imagining me in a miniskirt and wearing false eyelashes?”

“Goddamnit, Davy! You had to say it, didn’t you!” Mike yelped, fighting hard against the shared fantasy.

Davy’s smirk was now bigger than his face. “Yeah, can you _all_ stop picturing me in the white leather go-go boots, minidress, and matching white leather cap?”

“I’m not.”

“Thank you, Pete.” Davy threw him a beaming smile.

“It was black leather, right?” Micky stage-whispered, licking his lips.

Peter shrugged, his dimples set to _coy_ in their, well, _dimpling_ , Mike guessed was the verb. If it wasn’t, it should be.

“Was there a featherboa in anyone else’s?” Micky asked, on a fake-cough.

“Don’t, please.” Davy’s face was halfway to serious. “Chaps, I don’t think you get that it’s a lot of pressure to have to live up to. To perform under. Not that I’ve ever failed yet. Oh, and just so's you all know, I haven’t even had sex with Lola.”

“So that’s why! Curiosity.” Micky sounded like a scientist making a discovery. “Yeah, she wants to see if all those things written about you in the girls’ restroom are true.”

“Micky…” Mike tried to head that one off at the pass. Had a feeling he’d fail.

“Side note: they are not. I should know. I wrote some. Well, the biologically impossible ones. And the anatomically unfeasible. I mean, there’d be no way you’d be able to walk…”

Despite his best efforts, Mike got a flash of Micky in a restroom, in his glasses and a white lab coat, for some reason, sticking his tongue out of the side of his mouth and rubbing his hands together, then replacing a marker pen in his top pocket. A bevy of shocked girls stood behind him, pointing, their shrieks—

_Buuuuhh! Spriiiitz!_ This time the airhorn was followed by a short blast from the soda syphon.

“Thank you, Peter. Nice timing and co-ordination, as always,” Mike praised, tossing Micky a hand towel. He’d needed to set a light mood, get everyone loosened up, but he had to get this back on track. Time was short. “Micky, what do you think? You know the scene. The Strip. You grew up around here and you played a lot of the clubs. Plus you’re always _at_ the clubs.”

“And sometimes he even goes for the music, not to chance his arm.”

“ _Chance my arm?_ ” Micky repeated, frowning at Davy, after that interruption. “What does _that_ even mean?”

“Yeah, good point. No need to leave _that_ to chance, is there. It’s always there, for when you strike out.”

“Talking of striking things out, don’t put that in the minutes,” Mike begged Peter, when they’d all decoded Davy’s quips and Micky had stopped throwing ping-pong balls at him.

“All I’ve written so far is the purpose the meeting was called for.” Peter showed him.

“Thanks, babe. So if we could hear from Mr. Dolenz, our resident LA music scene expert? When he’s finished collecting the missiles he threw, before someone slips on one?” Mike added.

“Oh, sure.” Micky took his place again. “Yeah, I played the bubble-gum circuit, doing beat group covers for teenyboppers, at the Cauldron, and Dany’s, on the regular. But not even that age group want neat-haired guys in neat suits now. Look at the kind of groups they have at the Déjà Vu. You know that’s open to fifteen to eighteen-year-olds, and the music there lately? It’s all bar chords, power chords, distortion… Same at the Whiskey and Rye, for the eighteen to twenty-one-year-olds.”

“Yeah and the Warm Embrace? Not rock and roll at all. More folk roots, folk rock, you could say.” Peter went to fetch an album. “And a good few of the songs on here are even modernized versions of blues standards. Plus country and folk music and a bit of rock. And that track had far-out guitar effects, with Eastern-sounding scales.”

“You can play that. You can play anything, Pete.” Mike meant it. “I dig what you’re layin’ down about the Embrace. Yeah, I like their electric blues, what they do with the bass sound, their Hammond organ, their chord progressions…”

“Sounds like Peter,” Davy commented.

As Mike had intended it to.

“Sounds like some of our new stuff,” Micky agreed. “We _wail_ , guys! Rock, folk rock, country rock…it’s all in there. Man, we been getting the best reaction when Davy switches to bass so Peter can play keyboards.”

“Well, the Embrace use keyboards. And I bet Duke’s hired some groovy stuff for them. They wouldn’t be bringing their organ or electric piano from London, would they?” Mike asked.

“Or their Moog…” Micky added, a light in his eyes. “Davy, remember at that opening night party we played at the Jupiter Suite, when you took over drums after I’d played the into? That rocked, man! And it frees me up…”

“We won’t know till we go have a look-see. And ya know, we’re not trying to replace the Embrace.”

“Nice rhyme,” Peter said.

“Thanks.” Mike smiled and hoped Peter would grin back. “Okay, so maybe we only get hired for tonight…”

“The dead night.” Davy made a face.

“Well, yeah, but we need the money, as always, and it might lead to things.”

“What are we wearing?”

And with that query of Davy’s Mike knew he’d won. “Well, I suggest we go down there suited and booted and take stage clothes, like, I don’t know, we all take a different-colored button shirt?”

“And take some groovier clothes too. You know, more casual, hip…” Micky nodded.

“So, motion carried?” At the three nods, Mike indicated Peter should write that down. He banged the gavel. “Meeting adjourned. Once Peter’s finished writing the time on it, remember to read and sign the minutes, guys.” That way no one could say they hadn’t been hip to something, or hadn’t dug something. Their system usually worked. “Peter?”

His head was still bent over the meeting-record book, and he flipped the pages back. “I’m curious about all the meetings you’ve had without me,” came his reply.

“Ah.” Mike had stood, but now sat again. He should have recorded the minutes himself. “I kinda wish you hadn’t gone looking.”

“Davy, probably best you don’t look either.” Micky added his voice to Mike’s, sharing a grimace with him. “Say, why don’t I make you a fresh pot of tea, babe? And Peter, how about if Mike makes you a nice chamomile tea? Help you calm down?”

He and Micky sprang up.

“That’s not the way to the kitchen,” Davy observed a little sourly and without even looking, too busy reading over Peter’s shoulder.

“No, it’s the way to escape,” Micky acknowledged.

Mike just about managed to stop him launching into a Word War Two tunneling to freedom fantasy. “Rehearsal in five minutes!” he called. “There’s a lot riding on this.”

He suddenly stopped. Should he have handled things differently? He’d didn’t even know if they’d be given this gig—he didn’t know how far things on that side of the equation had gone or could go. He and Peter had to be at the Duke Box anyway. If there was any way for Mike to keep Pete—or any of them—out of things, he would have. But his method of looking out for them long-term had to involve them in the short-term. That was the downside. And while the group playing there was perfect, the plan would work with him and Peter there just as normal club goers, right? So, as in, getting Peter, and maybe the others, to spend the evening there even if they didn’t get the job? He ought to start playing that angle sooner rather than later.

Mike’s head throbbed under the weight of it all. He was not a natural at this. _Thank God._

“Mike?”

He glanced over. By his tone, Davy had called him before. Everyone was in place, waiting on him.

“Everything okay?”

“Sure.” Mike threw them all a general shrug. “Just pondering on what gear and equipment I’ll be taking with me.” Because he had very specific items of clothing and accessories he needed to take, without any of the others seeing him.


	10. Chapter Ten

“Guys?” Mike slammed the trunk closed, angling his body to shield its contents from any prying eyes looking out of the window. Not that there was much to see. He’d made sure what he needed was concealed either in his garment bag or under the base of the trunk. “Hey, guys? Let’s hat up.”

“Aye-aye, Sir,” came from inside the pad.

Mike extended his middle finger. “Climb it, Tarzan,” he muttered to whoever had just razzed him for using the military slang for making tracks. They’d all thought it hilarious when he’d first said it, laughing that he took it literally, making sure his wool hat was on when he left the pad, now he didn’t have to put on the regulation forces headgear whenever he stepped outside. _Ha-ha._

As soon as noise indicated the other three were on their way out, Mike called, “Shotgun!”

He expected Peter to reply with, “Here, Mike!”, their usual routine, but he didn’t. Micky, as always, started up with his, “If you’re driving, and I just bet you are, you don’t get to call shotgun too! You always do that, and I’m always telling you, just because things might work like that in Texas—”

“And I bet they don’t,” Davy chipped in.

“—that’s not how it goes here in California!”

“Yeah it is. And yes, I do. That’s Peter’s place. I like him there.”

A pause hung heavy for a few seconds, before Peter shrugged. “Micky can go in front.”

“No. I want you beside me.” Mike didn’t know why he was making a big deal of it, but he was. And he knew Peter wouldn’t be as stubborn as he was. Couldn’t be. No one could, although Davy came close, sometimes.

“Are you sure about that?”

Davy and Micky, clambering into the back seat, missed Peter’s question, but Mike didn’t. “I’m sure. Look, Peter, seems you’ve got grief with me. Do we have some straightening out to do?”

Peter said nothing, but…what? Was that a pout he was throwing Mike’s way? It looked half-sulky and half-adorable and, _God_ , totally hot. Mike wanted to nip that bottom lip, leave it puffier and redder, then soothe it with his tongue tip. He shifted, trying to stave off any involuntary reaction. _Wait._ Was that it? Peter was, what, acting out, acting up, acting bratty, in this way to provoke a reaction? He’d hinted at…something and had teased verbally Mike in bed. _Nah._ It wouldn’t be, not right out of the gate, would it? Not when Peter had said they had to figure their relationship out first. This had to be something else.

 “We’ll straighten it out. Talk it out. But not now.” Mike indicated the loaded car, the road ahead of them, the club awaiting them, the rehearsal behind them. “Soon.”

“Fine.” With less than his usual athletic command of his body, Peter got into the front. Mike followed.

“Let’s focus, please?” Mike caught Peter’s eye, then the eyes of the other two, via the mirror. “This could be a chance for us. Let’s all pull together, yeah?”

Another _aye-aye, Captain_ , greeted this, and Peter smiled. _Good._ Mike needed the band’s best efforts. The _band_ needed everyone’s best efforts. “Tell you what,” he said, pulling out onto the road. “How about if we don’t get the gig, we hang out in the Box tonight, anyway? Just cut loose, enjoy it?”

That set off a chorus of exclamations, mainly from the peanut gallery in back, some of which was teasing Mike about wanting to hang out with the English chick again.

“Davy, call and invite Toby and what’s her name, Amanda?” suggested Micky.

“Now, that’d be a bit awkward when I’m probably already gonna be on a date with a bird, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh yeah. Forget it.”

“I said, awkward…not impossible.” Davy looked calculating.

“We should call up Amanda anyway,” Micky stage-whispered.

Mike avoided Pete’s eye. He hoped Micky wasn’t really planning to. Although, if Peter was going to be busy… His scheming made him miss Micky’s question. “What?”

“I said, things are so good that we can have two nights out in a row…”

Damn. It would be, too. Two expensive evenings out, so close together—last night seemed so long ago that he’d almost forgotten it, but their kitty would barely cover this. Well, that meant Chikin Ramen broth for a few nights. Micky’s mom would be having them for their weekly meal midweek, thankfully, and—

“Which means you must be in a really groovy mood, which you can show by letting us—”

“ _No._ ” Mike knew what Micky wanted. “And grow up.”

“Yes. And never! How dare you, you tyrant!”

“Not—” Peter started.

“Chinese fire drill!” cried their two percussion players.

Mike had to grin. “Hey, tell you what. We get the job, it’s a yes. And you can choose the time and place, Mick.”

“And you all gotta do it?” Micky looked sceptical.

“Yeah. We all have to leap outta the car at the stop light, race around, and get back in our places before the light changes.” Saying it out loud made him feel stupid, but had Peter dimpling, so was good enough for Mike.

* * * *

Funny how clubs and bars looked so small in the daytime, even the fancy ones. It always seemed as if they expanded once people and music filled them. Impossible, Mike knew, but Duke’s was no exception. He’d seen it packed to the rafters, or rather the DJ platform up on the mezzanine floor, and it looked a little forlorn now, deserted and quiet, mid-afternoon. Mid Sunday-afternoon.

Paul Duke’s distress was as obvious as the lifts in his shoes or the comb-over of his thinning hair. It was also obvious that Lola had only just finished telling him the news when the four of them walked in. Lola was a tiny little bit of a thing, most of her height provided by her stilettoes and her beehive, both of which she clung to where most other chicks wore low, flat shoes and long, flat hair, yet as the DJ, she was the queen of the place of an evening, and, it seemed, stamped her mark on it in the daylight hours.

“But I don’t understand!” Duke was whining. “They’re supposed to be here now! And it’s press night.”

 _Oh, brother._ But yeah, that made sense, a short set, a meet-and-greet, getting the word out for the group’s residency.

“Well, that’s what happened, and until their manager calls again after hearing from their lawyer, we won’t know any more.” Lola nodded a hello to them and beckoned them forward. “Paul, here are the Monkees.”

By the look on Paul Duke’s face, it wasn’t going to be an easy sell.

“They’re available,” she continued.

“Not half, darlin’!” Davy blew her a kiss, making her blush.

“ _Slut,_ ” Mick fake-coughed, and Mike elbowed him.

“And if they fill in, you won’t have to call up each journalist and promoter and cancel,” Lola urged.

 _The you meaning I_ , Mike guessed.

“Just announce it once everything’s underway, change the theme of the evening…”

At least the pretty blonde waitress sorted them out with on-the-house coffee and snacks while the back-and-forth went on.

“How do you think it’s looking?” Micky whispered.

“I’d say we’ll be discussing set lists and lighting cues in about five minutes,” Mike replied, with more confidence than the situation perhaps warranted. His timing was a little off, but he was right. It was soon evident that Duke didn’t know a great deal about music, and put a lot of stock in his staff’s judgment and word, thank the Lord. And thank the Big Guy too that Lola and the rest of the club’s girls who were around, and those who were quickly called up to come around, enjoyed their audition. Well, hard not to, with Davy shaking and twirling his maracas as flamboyantly as a bullfighter did his cape, not to mention the fact that he was twinklin’ up a storm, left, right, and center. Or more like hook, line, and sinker.  

And Mike even got an agreement that the group would be paid above scale _and_ get a paid technical rehearsal.

“A two-hour performance! Chinese fire drill _and_ Chinese food, after this.” Micky rubbed his hands and prodded Mike.

“Sure,” he agreed, not really listening. “Say, I have to go downtown, run an errand. If you all wanna leave, make sure one of you stays, to watch the instruments?”

It took some doing, with some of them arguing in favour of locking their stuff away in the dressing room; after all, they had their own padlock, to which only they knew the combination. “You chose Pete’s birthday so it’s easy for him to remember, right?” Micky had said at the time. That wasn’t Mike’s reason at all for choosing a date he wanted to think of.

“Where are you going, did you say?”

Mike squinted at Peter. “Well, downtown, like I said.”

“Anywhere in particular?”

“Just to run an errand.”

“Which he also said.” Micky shook his head at Mike, making a face at Peter, over Peter’s shoulder, before wandering off.

“You don’t look very enthusiastic about whatever it is you’re going to do.”

Mike tried to gauge Peter’s mood and meaning from his tone and face. “Well, errands? Never fun, you know? But it’s a thing that’s got to be done. I’ll be back in good time.” He hoped.

“Michael.”

As always, it only took one word from Peter to stop him in his tracks. If Peter ever knew the power he had over Mike… “Yeah, good buddy?”

“The thing you have to do…is it an obligation?”

“Well, yeah.” _Not half_ , to quote Davy, even if the phrase didn’t make much sense to Mike. Maybe it only worked in a British accent. _Harrf._

“So then after, you’ll be free of your…obligations?”

“Not right away.” Mike wanted to bang his head against the wall, thinking of what lay ahead. “But soon enough, I guess.”

A wash of emotions crossed Peter’s face, and, while Mike knew he and Peter must be talking about different things, things Peter couldn’t know anything about, he didn’t know what Peter meant. And there was no time to learn. Not now. Now, when he had to drive to that small municipal park downtown and hope the toilets were open, so he could pull on a uniform over his clothes. His luck held: they were, and were empty, so no one saw him donning a brown park worker’s uniform. _Why do we even have such a thing?_ He tried to recall when Micky had gotten it, which one of his acting or ‘extra’ gigs had required it. Micky tended to hang on to his—and not only his—costumes and props once filming was done: the reason the pad was filled with them.  

And something struck Mike. He’d gone looking for some kind of uniform, and this had been very near the front of the rail. Why, when it should have been near the back, out of rotation, with no one wearing it? He couldn’t spare the time or the energy to worry about that now. He stuck on the mustache and hated the look of himself in the mirror. At least he was unlikely to see anyone he knew. Anyone who would recognise him.

 _Go to the trashcan—_ “There are _six_!” Mike yelped turning in a slow circle to see the entire park. He shushed himself. Should he have reconnoitred the location, earlier, in another disguise? But as always, there hadn’t been any time, and he’d had to improvise. Like now, spiking up bits of mostly non-existent litter and depositing them in each trashcan he passed, taking the opportunity to feel around for the day’s newspaper. Oh, it was disgusting. He vowed never to throw away banana skins or apple cores or half-eaten ice creams or used Kleenex without bagging them up first.

It was in the fourth trashcan, pristine and fat and crackling with extra sheets in between the newsprint pages. He slid it free, shaking rubbish from on top of it, and stowed it in his huge over-the-shoulder bag. Grinning in relief, he returned to the public toilet, yanked off the uniform, and hid it in his spare garment bag. He waited a few minutes and, after peering carefully around and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, retraced his steps to the car a block away and laid the garment bag flat in the trunk. Inside the car, he removed from the newspaper the pages that hadn’t been published in the printers, slid them flat into a large envelope and pushed that into a large paper bag which he buttoned longways under his shirt, tucking the bottom into his pants' waistband to secure it.

He thought he sang all the way back along the Strip and was still light with relief when he re-entered the club, where the first person he saw, as if waiting for him, alone at a table in a shadowy corner, was Peter. And he looked up at Mike with such a soft, hopeful light in his eyes that Mike couldn’t stop himself from pulling Peter up from his seat to kiss him.


	11. Chapter Eleven

And it was the most glorious meeting of their lips and his hands on Peter’s even more glorious ass and Peter’s strong hands around his upper back, pulling him in tight, hugging him. Peter gave the best hugs as a rule, his whole attention focussed on and his toned arms tightening around the person he folded in close to his warmth and scent, but this wasn’t a friend hug, or a good buddy hug. It was up close and personal and hot damn, over too soon, Peter’s muscles unbunching for his arms to hang stiffly at his sides.

“No, Michael.”

The same as had happened in the pad, when Mike had grabbed Peter. Except this time Mike clung on, his need stronger than his scruples.

“Not _here_!” Peter insisted, pulling away, jerking backward.

 _Jesus._ Mike snapped to, came to realization. _Of course not here._ “I know,” he muttered, thanking God the club floor seemed empty. They couldn’t afford this, one whisper that the band’s guitarist and bassist were— This decade was supposed to be all about sexual liberation and have a spirit of tolerance. Oh, sure, there were homophile bars and homosexual street marches. And from Mike had seen, those were places and events where cops and not only them liked to beat up on and arrest the clientele and the participants, leading to protests and demonstrations that became a free for all of violence against those involved.

He’d—they’d—have to think about all that at some point, of the logistics and restrictions and the, God, _concealment_ that that kind of relationship meant. No; _demanded_. But for now, they were MikeandPeter and while Mike was opposed to labels in general, that one was just fine.

“ _I know_ ,” he repeated in a tinier whisper, but unable to stop himself using his body weight to trap Peter against the wall, to nuzzle into his neck and inhale his scent. “Just one second,” he breathed. He needed it.

“Go to the dressing room. I’ll follow.” Peter slid out from the niche Mike had created. He took the book he’d been reading from where he’d left it on the table and slipped it into his pocket. He gathered up his teapot and cup and took them to the bar. “Quit staring at my butt and go,” he ordered, without looking behind him.

Caught out, Mike pivoted and made his way backstage. The area, the corridor, was the same as in all clubs, its wall decorated with a hundred or more photos of acts who’d played there. Huh. That included them. They’d have to autograph one of their promo pics. He usually liked to read the messages added to photos by fellow performers, whether friends or rivals, meaning the words could be complimentary…or not. The wall also bore the usual flyers and posters, candid pics snapped on the dance floor…and more salacious photos. But now Mike didn’t spare any of it a second of his time.

The door to the dressing room was unlocked. Well, no need with one of them on the premises. He wondered where Davy and Micky had gotten to, but then all thoughts of third parties fled when Peter was there, closing the door behind him. He leaned against it, not moving. Mike resigned himself. “I guess we have some talking to do.”

“Not right now.”

Would Peter ever stop wrong-footing him? Mike doubted it. “But you said—”

“That I wanted to wait. Yes, because I thought it best. But I need you too much.”

If Peter’s honesty was humbling, then his openness was a delight. And all of it served to guide Mike. “I… Me too, babe. I want you too bad.”

He moved and Peter left his post on the door and they met halfway in their hunger, devouring the other’s mouth, nipping, sucking, seizing, and only breaking off their battle when the need to gasp for breath overrode all others. It was searing and urgent and left Mike raw, his lips feeling as swollen as Peter’s looked. And oh, that wiggle of pride in him at having caused that. It should have been shaming. He licked his thumb and stroked it across Peter’s bottom lip, as if that would help. Well, the connection and Peter’s parted-lipped reaction helped him.

“Today’s been…difficult,” he began.

“Every day when we’re not…together is difficult,” Peter capped, peeling Mike’s hand free of his face to hold it. “Hard, you might say.” Oh that smirk, and his brush of their joined hands over Mike’s swelling-by-the-second hardness.

He could be just as smartassed as Peter. “You know, I’m pretty sure that’ll be the case even we’re together. Especially, if you think about it.”

“Oh I am.” Peter dropped a tiny peck of a kiss on Mike’s lips. “But things have to be right. Clear. Open. Between us. No secrets. Even if they’re difficult. Even if they concern other people. Other relationships.”

It came out scattergun, all Peter wanted to say, and Mike tried to catch and examine each bit of buckshot. “Is this about yesterday? Last night?” No, it had been the day before—the night before. That chick. Amanda. Him kissing her, feeling her up a little.

“You tell me.”

“Well, we, you and I, weren’t really together then. And I had no idea we would be. Oh, I wanted us to be,” he admitted. “Never doubt that.”

“That’s not ri—” Peter blinked. “Oh, so you had feelings for me even when—”

“For the longest time!” Mike used his free hand to cup Peter’s face.

“So what you did was unfair. Not just to me,” Peter added, seeing Mike’s incomprehension. “Mainly to the other party.”

That he’d been leading her on? “Maybe?” he half-agreed. But it’d only been a kiss. Or two. He hadn’t accepted her invite, hadn’t fucked her. “But you’re right, of course. It’s not good to use people, amuse yourself with them when you’re thinking of someone else. Only selfish people do that. But I don’t have to tell you _that_ wasn’t anything serious.”

Because Amanda surely wasn’t looking for any commitment; just a one-night stand, or maybe a summer fling, while she was here. Maybe she’d been planning to audition him. In which case, it could have been awkward if hadn’t made the cut, what with her being a neighbour, even for the short-term. He shrugged, then caught the look in Peter’s eye as Peter shook his face free of Mike’s hand.

“Just a bit of fun for both parties?”

“Well, yeah,” Mike said.

“Right.” Peter seemed to be struggling for words. “I didn’t realize you were…”

“What?”

“Like _that_.”

Mike wondered what he’d stumbled into. “I’m hardly a virgin, Pete. With guys or chicks. I’m no Davy Jones, but… Is this what today has been about? You thinking I’m some sorta hound dog?”

“That and now I’m wondering where _I_ stand.”

“What the hell?” Mike took a half-step away then swung back. “Peter, that has nothing to do with you! No, that’s not what I meant to say,” he added, when fire kindled in Peter’s eyes. “With my feelings for you. How I feel about you.”

“And how do you feel about me?” Peter sat on a stool at a small table and pulled one from underneath the table for Mike.

“I thought talks like this came a lot later on in the course of things.” Mike sat and tried to avoid looking in the mirror. He gave a short laugh. “I guess nothing’s the right way round with us, huh? We moved in together way back. We’re sharing a room and a bed. And now ‘the talk’.”

“So make with the words.”

“Pete, I dunno what to tell you! I wanted you for the longest time. I’m crazy about you. I _like_ you.” He didn’t know why he added the last one. It was true, and it was important, he guessed.

“You’ll be saying next you respect me or, better, you still respect me the morning after.”

As jokes went, it was small, but there and then, Mike would have taken anything. “I do. Always have, always will. You know that.”

“I… Yeah.” Peter hung his head for a moment, then looked at Mike. “I didn’t want to do this. But I need it. Need you.”

“Pete—” Anything else he might have said was lost as Peter’s lips brushed a kiss against his. And when Peter’s lips opened Mike’s mouth, the kiss Peter initiated stole the breath from Mike. Winning the brief duel that followed, Mike swept his tongue into Peter’s mouth, exploring the wetness and heat, stabbing and sucking. He drank from Peter, fusing his mouth to his as if he’d never be able to stop kissing him. Peter’s hands came around the back of Mike’s neck, clasping him tightly, and Peter’s long fingers twined in his hair, holding him close. And ruffling his wool cap from his head.

Peter caught it as it dropped free of Mike’s hair, the action breaking their contact. He turned the hat over in his hands, a sly grin spreading across his face.

“What’s that wicked smile for?”

“Did you know if someone takes off your hat and puts it on their own head, it means they want you to kiss them?” Peter asked.

“Is that right?” A quick glance in the mirror showed that even side-on, Mike’s grin was just as silly as Peter’s.

Peter nodded, wide-eyed. “I read it in _Nova_. In the section for men.”

“What, like a section on being flirted with, in swinging London? I swear that rag is where Davy gets all his ideas, man!” Mike took his hat from Peter and put it on Peter’s head, settling it with care on those smooth tresses he loved to feel. “And what would _this_ mean, pray tell?”

“I’m not sure. I’d have to read next month’s issue.”

“Oh, don’t bother straining your eyes. I’ll tell you. No, better yet, show you.” 

The kiss he took Peter’s mouth in this time was carnal, sucking Peter’s tongue into his own mouth and mastering it. Taming it. Devouring it. He rejoiced in the moan of protest Peter gave when Mike lifted his head, and the haze he saw in Peter’s eyes when he gazed into them. Before he could figure out his next move, Peter was sucking his neck, his teeth nibbling a spot behind Mike’s ear that Mike hadn’t known would make his breath leave his body on a gasp—but Peter had. Peter slipped a hand onto Mike’s chest to slide open the top few buttons, each flick and release timed to synch with a beat of Mike’s heart.

Then, changing his mind, reversing direction, Peter slid his hand down Mike’s stomach, his fingers poised to pluck Mike’s shirt from his pants. A crackle sounded, loud in the room that panting and moans had filled until just a second ago. Peter stilled, then felt around the edge of something under Mike’s shirt.

“What’s that?”

Oh, for crying out loud. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten what he was carrying. He removed the hands with which Peter had pulled Mike’s shirt free enough to give him a glimpse the outline of the rectangular envelope, looking a little bulky in its paper wrapping.

He tried a shrug. “It’s just some stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?

Mike didn’t answer, too busy cursing himself, to mortified imagining himself explaining his fuck-up. “ _And that’s how things went to shit, Sir, because I stopped for some kissin’ and caressin’. Well, yeah, seems just as I’m no Davy Jones, I’m for sure as fuck no James Bond…_ ”

“Where’s it from?” Peter switched tack a little.

“I, well, just collected it.”

“That… That was your errand. Your obligations.” Peter stood and walked a pace. “You’re not going to keep it?”

Mike felt like he’d stumbled on stage somewhere, into some play he had no clue about, dialogue he had no understanding of, motivation he had no knowledge of. All he could do was keep going. He stood, too. Wouldn’t be at a disadvantage. “No. God knows, I can’t wait to get rid of it.” And that was no lie.

“Do it now.” Peter twisted, a curve of energy and force, to kick at something under the dressing table. “Here’s a trash bin.”

“I can’t do that. It’s… You’re pushy. Pushing,” Mike amended, to fume with anger with himself. He would not turn this back onto Peter when Peter was blameless. Doing so last night had hurt.

“Pushing and prodding and chipping.” Peter hung his head and sighed. “Nothing,” he added, his raised hand cutting Mike off when he went to ask what that meant. “You’re right. You have to do what you have to do when the time’s right to do it. Not before.”

“You sound very zen there, buddy.”

Peter’s laugh was hollow. “I’m _really_ not. I’m jealous and insecure.”

“Hey, there’s nothing to be jealous about. Not where I’m concerned.” Mike looked hard into Peter’s eyes, putting everything he had into it, trying to convince him. “There’s only you, babe.”

“But not quite yet. You’re not quite finished. Not yet.” Peter swallowed.

“Well, no. You’re very smart, Pete. C’mere. _Please, sugar._ ” It was his turn to wrap a hand around the nape of Peter’s neck and pull him in for a kiss. This was sweeter and softer, smaller, tiny darts and presses that nevertheless fired all Mike’s senses, priming him, laying foundations.

“That…tasted of promise,” whispered Peter when they broke apart.

Mike touched his forehead to Peter’s, then his nose to his, unable to bear any loss of closeness. “It tasted of the future,” he husked back.

A bustle started up outside, voices calling and answering and the drags and grunts of heavy things being moved.

Peter cocked his head. “I guess the tech guys are here.”

“And the others.” Mike would have known those voices anywhere. “Must be time to rehearse.”

Funny. Standing close to Peter, feeling their shared warmth, Peter’s kisses still on his lips—for the first time ever, Mike had no desire to go play music.


	12. Chapter Twelve

“Here. Take this back. Apart from the psychodynamics it’s unleashing, we wouldn’t want to confuse anyone as to who’s who.” Peter slipped Mike’s wool hat off. He indicated Mike should bend his head a little, for Peter to settle the hat on Mike’s considerably less silky locks.  Mike closed his eyes at the feel of Peter’s fingers stroking his swoop of hair from his left eye. Peter gave a last tweak to the hat. “Make of me doing _that_ what you will,” he commented, his eyes gleaming.

“Oh, I will,” Mike assured him. “Go. I’ll catch you up.”

“Me go first, again? Just so you can stare at my ass?” Peter turned, nevertheless.

“No. So I can _swat_ your cheeky ass.” Mike got in a good slap at one tempting, round globe, realizing he shouldn’t have done so when either that, or Peter’s half-yelp in response, had him hard. Well, harder. “And I’m not sorry!” he called after Peter, smiling despite his discomfort when “Me neither,” carried back to him.

Alone, Mike pulled the paper bag free and looked for a plastic bag to put that into. He was hot now and—the mirror showed him—his face flushed. An hour on stage would have him sweating through the paper bag and maybe the envelope. He wasn’t about to take any risks with the contents. He was just taping the plastic to his midriff for extra safety when a woman called his name from the corridor.

“There you are! They wondered where you were.”

He eyed Jo-Ann, the leggy waitress, now leaning on the doorframe. In her heels, she wasn’t much shy of six feet, and word was she liked even taller men. “Did they now?”

“Well…” She grinned. “I thought I’d see where you’d gotten to.”

“You found me.” He thought again about later. If Peter was busy with a chick…or more likely, if Peter had to be encouraged to get busy with a chick…then Mike seeming to be into Jo-Ann could help? He grinned back and indicated she should go ahead of him. “Not hard to do—I’m too tall to miss.”

“Yup, you’re one long, lean Texan all right.” She looped her blonde hair in a twirl over her shoulder as they walked down the corridor.

“Yeah? I thought I was tall, dark, and Texan?”

“Oh, it varies.”

“Well, no mistake there. I’m lean and tall. Takes one to know one?” As come-on lines went, it was dismal, but she smiled at him as they crossed the club floor to the band podium.

“Yeah, such a pity that long, tall Sally chick got there first. Long, tall Jo-Ann just doesn’t sound right after that,” she said.

Davy’s gaze homed in on them, stopping mostly at the chick. “Does to me. I like tall girls,” he announced.

“But do they like you?” Micky, of course, hitting a sting on his snare drum in accompaniment.

“Yeah, and you got your hands full already, buster,” Mike reminded him, nodding and saying hi to the sound and lights guys waiting for them.

“Huh?” And the little wiseass made a play of turning his empty hands over, smirking at his tambourine and maracas on a stool near him.

“I think what Mike said to you was, ‘no poaching’,” Micky threw in. “You know, like how he calls shotgun? When he’s also driving?”

“ _Poaching?_ Well, I’m game,” quipped Jo-Ann, more or less near Mike’s ear, and twirled and sashayed away.

“Hey, Jo-Ann?” Mike called before she’d taken two steps.

She was too cool to turn around, but she did stop.

“When’s your break?” he called.

Now she spun, to raise an eyebrow at him. “Whenever I want it to be.”

“Good to know.” Mike shot her a wink.

Her strut to the bar was tracked by at least two hot-eyed stares and an appreciative, drooling silence, until Micky and Davy started bellyaching about how Mike’s being the leader didn’t mean he could call all the shots, and squabbling about who had precedence next, based on their love of blonde hair and height in a chick, respectively.

“Mike…” Peter turned from staring after the waitress to him. “What was that?”

“Nothing.” He strapped on his guitar. “Just some fun.”

“A bit of fun?”

It took him a second to relate that to Peter’s earlier remark and behaviour. “Sure.” He shrugged. “Why not? Ah. I get it. Is that something we have to add to the list? Of things to talk about? Get straightened out?”

“Yes. It _really_ is.” Fire sparked in Peter’s eyes. “Because if—”

“Hey, we playing or what?”

“ _Or what_ ,” Peter answered Micky, in as near to a snap as he could get. “Sorry. Yes.”

“Pete. Later, okay? We’ll go through everything?” Mike hoped that would be possible.

Peter didn’t reply, but threw him a tight-lipped nod that Mike knew was more than he deserved.

The tech rehearsal went well, very well, and Mike was pleased that Peter approved of the keyboards that had been set up on stage and that Micky got tips on using the synthesizer. Peter relaxed more with every song they tried, losing himself in the music as always, even if it was just a practice session in a barely populated space, with no song played all the way through without stopping to adjust.

Only afterwards, as they circulated among the club patrons, did Mike recall that a good dress rehearsal usually boded ill for the first performance. Did it apply to tech rehearsals for a one-off performance, he wondered, staring at the floor on overhearing club goers laments that the group they’d come to hear wasn’t playing, that no replacement would be able to deliver what the Embrace could.

“Ah. The Sundays sophisticates,” Lola said, when Mike went to see what she made of the atmosphere. She must surely see it all, from her perch on high and from the floor. “They like the fact that the group’s English, plays different stuff, ya know?”

He nodded. “I can dig that.”

“I didn’t say they dig it,” Lola replied. “I said they like the fact.”

“But the Embrace are really good.”

Mike hadn’t seen Peter come up behind him, but was pleased he was there. He pressed back into him, hating that Peter moved away.

“Yeah. They’re great musicians. Like, musicians’ musicians. And their sound is original. But”—Lola indicated the crowd below—“how many of these are musicians and how many just want to glom onto the latest thing, like, before it’s a thing?”

“Huh.”

Mike understood Peter’s reaction. Peter was a musician, a music _lover_ , through and through. To the core. No pretension. No posing. One of the many things Mike l—dug about him.

“We’d better go get ready.” Peter tapped his watch.

“Yeah.” Mike caught the owner’s eye and nodded in the direction of backstage, indicting they were with the program. On his short journey through the club, that mounting unease, that bad-scene feeling wrapped around him again, dragging at his ankles. The half-apologetic, half-defensive look on Paul Duke’s face as he moved towards the stage sure didn’t ease it any.

Peter got a good look at Mike in the dressing room. “What’s wrong?”

“Shush a sec, there, Pete. Sorry. Let me listen.” Mike got up close to the PA, the bum-trip feeling intensifying.

_“Ladies and gentlemen, I know you’re expecting the Warm Embrace. But, sadly, I regret—”_

“Stupid idiot!” Mike exploded. “Three negatives—man, you should never even have _one_ in a speech, least of all right at the go-get! You never start with an apology and you never say what’s lacking.”

The faces of the others fell at the boos greeting the club owner’s words.

“Fuck it. Fuck it all.” Mike swiped his hat from his head.

“Oh, man. When the hat comes off, it’s serious,” Micky said, no trace of a joke in his tone.

Mike tugged his tie off and undid his top two buttons.

“ _Woah,_ ” came Micky’s response.  

“Change of plan.” Mike grabbed his old jeans from his pile of clothes. “Guys, remember how Peter couldn’t beat that jerk Ronnie at his own games?”

“But he beat him at his,” replied Micky.

“Right. You were right earlier, Mick. Just like Lola’s right. And Peter’s right.” Mike threw him a glance, needing Peter on board. “Bar chords, power chords, distortion… We’re going back to basics. Show these posers what they’ve been missing.” He slipped behind the dressing table to change into his denim jeans, trying to conceal the plastic-wrapped package still taped to him.

“Forget the psychedelic and electric blues?”

“Uh-huh,” Mike answered Peter. “Hit ’em with real scream-and-shout barn stompers. The loudest, most obnoxious drumming and percussion, the fattest, heaviest guitar riffs, and the fuzz bass overdrive effect pedal to the damn metal. We’re gonna go out there and rock, and rock loud and hard.” He nodded as the others climbed into basic street clothes, and regretted that Peter laid aside his colored pants and waistcoat and beads. “Keep those handy for the second set,” he suggested. “We’ll change things up then.”

“Sure, Mike.”

That Peter trusted him, respected his judgment meant the world to Mike. “Come on,” he said, pushing open the dressing room door with more force than was needed, to usher the others out. _Counting them out and in._ Wasn’t that what Micky called Mike’s habit of doing that?

“’Ere, Mick.” In the wings, Davy, hearing the crowd, swallowed. “You know how you’re always feeling like you’re like something, say, like you’re an ice cube, when we tell you to cool it?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, right now, are you feeling like Ringo Star at the first gig he played with the Beatles when he replaced Pete Best?”

“I am _now_!” Micky wailed, drumming his sticks against the wall.

“I think we all are,” Mike confessed, tapping each one on the back as they strolled out on stage. Peter’s, he made into a caress, wondering if he could feel it, if it helped. It helped Mike.

And then there was no time to think, because he was off into his speech, throwing out lines like _you came for press night but we’re here to give everyone a night off, a night out, to rock out_ , and trying not to catch his bandmates’ eyes at how cheesy it was.

“You came for the Embrace, now stay for the Monkees,” added a voice to his left, before Peter made a howl of feedback fill the club.

“Get down and get dirty,” shouted Davy, gripping the mic hard and right to his mouth, his action or his accent or both making it lewder than lewd.

“Yeah, we’re loud. And we wail!” warned Micky, seconds before starting a hard, cresendoing tattoo that left no room for argument.

_Damn, I didn’t get the word ‘raw’ in_ , Mike lamented, launching into an intense intro, hitting the strings hard, playing as many down strokes as the actual tune as written would stand, and palm muting everything in sight. When he didn’t get the reaction he sought from the crowd, he repeated the intro, playing it again until everyone on the floor was paying attention. Well, they could hardly ignore it.

It was loud, as he’d promised, and almost brutal, thrashing through their heavier, harder-hitting numbers, but it was good. And the faces of the other three said they agreed.

‘“She’?” he called to the others as their first set neared the forty-minute mark. He wanted Peter to shine and his harmonies were fantastic on that. And it was as fantastic as it had ever been. Mike was almost taken aback by the applause when it ended and he announced they were taking a break. Shouts of _encore_ hit them.

“Your song.” Peter was firm, nodding at the others.

_Our song_ , Mike thought, obediently announcing ‘You Just May Be the One’. And it was a good song to end on, to link into the ideas he had for the second set after the intermission, breaking into more West Coast sounds.

“Thank you very much.” Mike took a bow, hoping he didn’t sound as much like Elvis as Micky swore he did when he said that. He grinned, riding the waves of the applause and cheers. “We’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

Lola of course burned a good one right then, even before they left the stage, cleverly keeping the customers on the floor. Nudging Peter out onto the floor, rather than the dressing room, and making the universal sign for _let’s get a drink_ , Mike got in a quick, surreptitious feel of the plastic-protected papers he carried. Still okay. It couldn’t be long now. Couldn’t be too soon for him. Again he stroked his fingers down Peter’s back, disguising the action by guiding Peter through the crowd. He’d have to stick close to Pete—

“Hi, there!” A woman sprang up from a table as they passed. She planted herself in front of Peter, staring at his blond hair and ignoring Mike, whose heart pounded louder than Micky’s kettledrum. “That was great!”

“Thanks. Glad you liked it.” Peter smiled.

Mike breathed out, trying not to let his tension show. This could be random. Peter was attractive to women, after all.

“Would you allow me to buy you a drink?” the woman continued.

Her phrasing sounded a little unnatural, as well it might. It was the passphrase. This was it.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

“Well, that’s very kind of you, but—”

“Peter! Don’t be rude,” Mike interrupted. There was no answerphrase. “You have a beautiful lady here, one who appreciates your music and is offering to buy you a drink, so I suggest you sit yourself down and enjoy your break with her.” He pushed Peter down at the shoulder.

“What?” Peter looked from the woman to Mike. “And what will you do?”

“Oh, well, I guess I’ll see if Jo-Ann feels like taking a break from the bar now.” Mike spied an empty bottle on the table. “Lemme take this dead soldier to his rest and go see.”

The woman laughed. Mike knocked the empty off the table as he went to collect it and grabbed it before it hit the floor, his intention to scoop up the journalist’s purse from the ledge under the table and transfer his burden to her in that way. Bent over, he stopped, confused and alarmed. Her bag was tiny, just a little bit of nothing to clutch in the hand. Which he did, shoving it under his shirt, straightening and sweeping away from the table, not looking at Peter’s furious face.

What to do? Mike deposited the empty bottle on the back of a nearby booth, his back to Peter and Maryann. He opened the uselessly small purse and thrust a hand in, searching for what, he didn’t know. Something that made it expand in size? If chick’s purses had such a lever or zipper, that would be wonderful. His fingers closed around a square of cardboard. A cloakroom ticket. He seized it and snapped the purse closed. A waitress passed him, busy with orders and people returning from the dance floor, and heading in the direction of Peter’s table.

“Ma’am?” Mike slotted the purse under the waitress’s arm. “Would you drop this on a chair at that table there when you go that way? I guess it got kicked out from under the table. Oh, and where’s the cloakroom?”

There shouldn’t be an attendant, not this time of the evening, he thought. _Hoped._ But there damn well was, leaning on the wooden counter, tapping her feet to the music as she sipped a soft drink. He could hand over the ticket, be given the item, hand it back…but this wasn’t his show. He was not supposed to be linked to it. If she was busy at one side of the counter, her back turned to the other, he could hop over that other side and slip behind the curtain that made up the back of the small square corral she stood in. What would busy her?

Feeling like an idiot, Mike exited the corridor and re-entered the club’s main floor. And there, perched on the arm of a booth, whooping up a storm with a pair of pretty girls, was Davy.

“Davy!” Mike hissed, waving him over.

Davy, the annoying little squirt, waved _him_ over, signaling with those absurd eyebrows of his that Mike should join them. Mike raised his hands in prayer and made a pleading face. Davy frowned and cast a look at the women, especially the one whose top he was leering down. Friendship, or duty or whatever won, for which Mike was grateful.

“I need your help, good buddy,” he said, pulling Davy from the noisy room into the relative quiet of the corridor.

“Everything okay?” Davy looked startled.

“Yeah. Need your expertise.”

“Take it you don’t mean my vocals. Or dancing.”

“I need you to distract the cloakroom girl while I slip into the cloakroom. And this has to remain our secret. I mean it.” He slouched, making himself smaller. Davy didn’t take kindly to guys looming over him.

“Why?” The stubborn look on Davy’s face said _no words, no action_.

Mike sighed. “I’m gonna sneak behind the curtain and slip something into a chick’s coat.”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” Davy slapped Mike’s chest. “Whoever this bird is, just ask her out! Want me to for you?”

“Davy. _Please._ ”

Davy must have seen something in Mike’s face, because he nodded.

“And it’s just between us, li’l biscuit. Okay?”

Davy thinned his plump lips. “I’ll keep any secret you want if you never call me that again.”

It had slipped out. “Sorry.”

“You’re really hung up on her, whoever she is,” Davy commented.

“You have _no_ idea,” Mike replied. “Okay. Work your magic.”

It didn’t seem like magic; more like nothing. Davy sauntered along to the cloakroom, whistling, and stopped dead at the sight of the attendant. With a jaunty, “’Ello, darlin’! ’Ere, what’s a smashing bird like you doing out here all on her tod?” he hopped up, literally, onto one of the shorter sides of the wooden counter, right in front of her.

Mike, hidden from the girl’s view, crouched and crab-walked around to vault over the other side of the barrier and slip behind the curtain, Davy’s, “Smashing? Don’t you know what ‘smashing’ means? Dear, oh dear,” following him.

The rows were organized and it was easy to find the short jacket that corresponded to the numbered cardboard ticket. He ripped the plastic bag open and pulled the paper one free, then took out a few safety pins from his pants’ pocket. His preparedness, his being the one to carry around a flashlight or a lighter or a churchkey, say, at first took people aback, but then they came to rely on it, to expect Papa Nez to provide what they needed or wanted.

And here he was, doing the same thing for his bandmates, only in their case to prevent something they didn’t want. That nobody wanted. Maybe one day he’d examine his behavior, his tendencies, but not now. Not when he was pinning a large paper envelope to the lining of a summer jacket and hoping to holy hell and back it was Maryann’s, that she hadn’t swapped tickets with a friend, that there’d been no mix up…and that there wouldn’t be.

He wiped his sweating hands on his jeans and peeked around the curtain. Davy caught his eye and gave him a look that Mike interpreted as _all clear to clear out_ , and he did so, without the girl turning around. She probably had stars in her eyes and couldn’t have seen him anyway.

At the first waste bin he came to, Mike tore the remains of the plastic from his stomach. “ _Son of a bitch!_ ” he yelped—ripping off the adhesive strips he’d secured it with yanked off half his body hair with them. _Jesus. And some people do that on purpose?_ He straightened and tried to look normal, composing himself to go back into the club, when his gaze was drawn to Peter, as if there was nobody else in the room. Mike’s feet took him over to the table. Peter sat stiffly, his face tight. As tight as the woman’s, only hers had confusion written on it too. 

Peter got to his feet. “Mike—”

“Hey, guys? Have you seen my watch?” Micky asked, swooping up and spreading his arms out.

“It’s right there on your wrist, Mick.” Mike pointed.

“Oh yeah! So, see the time? See the stage? See where I’m going with this?” He did a little on-the-spot dance, drumming invisible sticks. The trio of chicks who’d followed him giggled and he took a gangly, uncoordinated bow to them. “Hate to tear you away from your new friend, Peter…”

“That’s fine.”

Mike thought Maryann probably agreed with Peter. Under cover of whirlwind Micky and his entourage, Mike slipped the cloakroom ticket next to the woman’s small purse. Not in—he wanted to give her a sign that the handover had taken place, that she hadn’t been wasting her time or gotten the wrong mark.

“We ready?” Davy joined them, insinuating himself into the middle of the girls. “Oh, hello.” He raised an eyebrow at the tallest. “Well, we can have a few more minutes.”

“Yeah, guys? Could you give Mike and me a minute before you come get changed?” Peter jerked a thumb in the direction of the dressing room.

“Not a problem,” Micky assured him. “Oh, Jo-Ann was looking for you, Mike.”

“Uh-huh,” Mike replied, trying to catch how Peter and Maryann were taking their leave, were leaving things.

Davy looked from Peter to Mike, but if he’d been intended to say something, it was lost as Peter stalked off and Mike had no choice but to follow. He also figured he had no choice but to brazen things out. Peter entered the dressing room first and waited for Mike to trail him in.

“Shut the door,” he ordered, his voice flat and low.

A little startled, Mike obeyed.

“What _is_ it with you?” Peter shouted.

“What?” No; play dumb. Better choice.

“Why did you want me to spend time with that chick?” Peter’s eyes were dark. Mike had seen them that way recently, but now they weren’t darkened and heavy-lidded with passion. They were furious.

“I don’t—she seemed nice, seemed into you?”

“So you thought I should have a bit of fun with her, like you with Jo-Ann or whoever else you were with in the interval?”

“No.” Although, he had needed Peter to at least sit and talk with the Maryann chick, and Mike was determined to be as honest as he could be. “Well, not exactly.”

Peter slammed a hand down on the dressing table, making the items there jump. “So, more exactly, was it some sort of test, perhaps, to see if I’m faithful?”

“Peter! That’s d—” Mike froze. He’d promised himself never to say the _d_ word to Peter. Because dumb? Peter wasn’t.

“Okay.” Peter came closer, close enough to touch, and breathed out. “Is it some sort of cover? That you—and you think I should—come on to chicks so no one suspects we…” He gave up trying to define what Mike and he were, finishing with a shrug. “Because I think you’d know how I’d feel about that. About using people.”

“That’s not it at all.” Mike regretted his phrasing as soon as it was out of his mouth. He’d just confirmed there was an _it_ , that there was _something_. These little words. Tiny, small commonplace words you used a hundred times a day. _They_ tripped you up. Not the big ones. Those you could just avoid.

“Mike, I don’t get it!” Peter’s frustration was palpable. “Tell me if I’m wrong, but this, this between us? It feels like one step forward, half a step backwards and half a step to the side.”

“I guess…it must.”

“You said I had nothing to be jealous about. So does that mean you’ll carry on screwing chicks while you’re in an intimate relationship with me? After we said we were going steady?”

“Peter. Hey. Pete. Calm down.”

Peter didn’t. He built up. “Because going steady means to date one person. Or is like one of those things that’s different where you’re from? There, does it mean okay, you’re with one guy, but women are different? They don’t count?”

The only thing Mike could think of to say in answer to that was something that would hurt. And hurting Peter? That broke Mike’s heart. “Actually _we_ didn’t say that. If you cast your mind back, you asked if us making out meant we were going steady and when I asked if that was what you wanted, you said—”

“Yes. I said yes.” Peter tipped his head back to stare Mike hard in the eyes. Mike wished he had his sunglasses on. “And you…didn’t answer. Because…of your ‘obligations’ elsewhere.”

All Mike could do was repeat something he’d said before. “I don’t know what to tell you except I want to be with you.”

“Just me? No getting it on with, no coming onto girls? Or, _fuck_ , other guys?”

“As far as possible.” It was the best Mike could do, but not surprisingly, it didn’t please Peter.

“As far as—” His hands clenched into fists and he shoved them into his pockets. “ _God_ , Michael! If I wasn’t a pacifist, I think I’d take a swing at you.”

“Maybe you should. Maybe it’s what I deserve,” was all Mike could answer, hating what this was doing to Peter. And what _he_ deserved? He certainly didn’t deserve Peter, someone who was bright and open, not mired in shadows. Mike had never backed down and wouldn’t now. He let Peter look at him, examine him.

“I don’t understand what’s going on. But I will,” Peter promised.

“If I could tell you, I would.” Mike’s words were a whisper, but standing as close as he was, Peter heard them. As Mike had intended him to.

Slowly, Peter pulled his hands free of his pockets and unbunched his fists. His hands now open, he ran them up Mike’s arms, to the backs of his shoulders, and pulled, to bring Mike close. When there was no space between them, Peter slipped one hand up to the back of Mike’s head and brought that down, to rest in the crook of Peter’s neck. Just for one second, then another, until footsteps and voices came from outside the door.

Just a few seconds, but they were enough. They had to be.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

“Hey, Peter.” Mike ran his hand down Peter’s arm and encircled his wrist when Peter went to slip free. “Whatever happens, between us…it can’t affect the group. Right? We can’t let it.” When Peter merely stood, an eyebrow raised, he dropped Peter’s wrist then added, “I mean, we won’t let it.”

“We didn’t let it and we aren’t letting it, so I’d say we won’t let it.” Peter hoped that was true, not just a petty verbal point to score. As was the next thing he said. “That goes without saying. I expected better of you, Michael.”

A tiny part of him thrilled at Mike’s reaction to that reproof, but the rest of him experienced shame at his own smallness. He expected better of himself. He moved aside for the others to enter and change. _Mike’s going through something. He needs understanding_ , he berated himself. Peter was trying, but he wasn’t a saint, though. As evidenced by him giving a half turn, when he changed, so his left hip was facing Mike—its bite mark, in all its glory, revealed.

Yes, he was petty enough to relish Mike’s swallowed-back gasp on viewing the hickey. Even if Mike couldn’t make out the teeth marks, he could see the colors he’d made bloom on Peter’s skin. Peter liked it being there. He’d been pressing his hand into all day, bringing to vivid life again and again the memory of Mike exploring him, using his teeth and lips to trace Peter’s body, and Peter’s reaction to each nip and caress. He’d been hard all day.

Peter risked a sly peep over at Mike where he was changing his shirt and what he saw made him still in his turn. Or rather, what he didn’t see—the paper bag Mike had been carrying. Mike no longer had about him what had looked to Peter like sheets of paper, letters, maybe, perhaps even poems and songs, and no doubt photographs.

What did that mean? Peter took a discreet look around. There was nothing new in the trash bin, and no bag lying around. In his guitar case? No, Mike didn’t even flinch when Peter opened it. His garment bag, when Peter pulled down the zipper a little, seemed to contain only his suit. Okay… _But it has to mean something, right?_ He’d ponder, or even ask Mike later. Not now, when it was time to take the stage again, and let the audience’s anticipation and warmth charge him as he and the rest of the group emerged and acknowledged the crowd.

“Peter, she’s _gone_!” Micky intoned in his best theatrical gasp. It usually made Peter grin, but not now, not when they were setting up on stage for their second performance and Micky was poking him in the back with a drumstick. “Your chick’s leaving,” he clarified, pointing his other stick out into the audience and moving it like a tracking antenna. He even made the _bip-bip-bip_ sound effect.

Peter gave a one-shoulder shrug as he strapped on his burgundy Gretsch. “She’s not my chick and why shouldn’t she leave? She got what she came for.”

“Wu-what?”

Peter staggered as Mike span around, almost pouncing on him. Mike stopped himself, one arm on Peter’s before he dropped it.

“What d’you mean?” Mike clarified.

“She was a journalist.” Peter jerked his chin at the club, now less filled than before. He supposed a lot of people invited to see the real group hadn’t stuck around, in the absence of the advertised group.

“Their loss,” Davy observed. “Because this half is going to be even better!”

Peter thought so too, right from Mike’s first announcement that the Monkees had given the crowd what they’d needed to hear, and now they were gonna get what they wanted to hear. It sounded fine, delivered with confidence and meaning, but when you analysed it… Peter refused to think that was a metaphor. He focused on their set, getting into the groove they were laying down, from the slide-bar twangy country rock of their opening song, to the jangly guitars and layered harmonies of the next, for which he switched to acoustic guitar while Davy played keyboards.

“You’all wanna hear some folk rock or some blues next?” Mike asked the crowd, getting them to holler and hoot their preferences. Peter loved seeing him like this, loose and easy, riding high on the vibes. It happened with music and, Peter had thought, with him. Maybe it would, when they worked through whatever is was stood in the way. _Mike_ , Peter thought, fighting a pout. He’s _standing in our way._

He snapped to when folk rock was deemed to have won the vote, and took up his banjo. “I’m proud to play you ‘East Virginia’,” he announced, and it went down very well. He didn’t catch on at first when Mike said, “again,” but understood and couldn’t stop grinning as he played the tune over, music only, while Mike revved up the crowd into a square dance, yelling out the hash calls to move the audience from one step to another.

Mike’s skill at patter calls had amazed them when they’d first heard him, and away from Davy and Micky’s mockery, he and Peter sometimes improvised singing calls, Mike delivering the calls mixed in with the songs’ lyrics sung by Peter. They should practice that, get it into real call-and-response, almost dueling, form in lyrics and music, and try and use it. Mike was certainly good enough.

“Give ’em one more, Pete,” Mike instructed and Peter, hoping the others wouldn’t resent his spotlight, announced ‘Cripple Creek’. Was this Mike responding to the audience, or him giving Peter something extra, for whatever reason? Either way, Micky’s blues numbers, next, went over well, especially when Davy took over the drums after Micky had started the number, without missing a single beat.

“You want psychedelic? We got your psychedelic!” Mike promised next, and the group delivered.

It seemed they’d only been on stage a minute, but the set was over and they were playing ‘Words’, the song they’d agreed to end on. Except that the audience had other ideas.

‘“Pick a Bale of Cotton’?” Peter said. “As a singalong,” he added, indicating the audience. But to Mike singalong meant getting all the band members to sing a verse each first, before inviting the crowd in on the fun. It worked even better, and the cheers and whistles of the audience followed them all the way to the dressing room.

“ _Man!_ ” Micky spoke for all of them, and the amount of soda he guzzled down straight from the bottle was enough for four.

“Guys? That?”

Peter loved seeing Mike so lit up.

“That was one of the best gigs we’ve ever played!”

With them all cheering and backslapping, they didn’t realize Paul Duke was there, trying to make himself seen or heard, but they were glad when they did, with what he had to say.

“One moment, please,” Mike answered. “See, we here in the Monkees, well, we’re a democracy.”

“Which means he listens to what we all have to say, and _then_ tells us what to do,” Micky explained.

“So we have to take a vote on it.”

“Really?” Peter questioned, doubting any of them would say no, but still, true to their agreed-on process, they huddled close, Mike pressing against him.

“All in favour of accepting the offer, subject to approval of the terms and conditions—”

“Even if it is only the early slot,” Davy added to Mike’s opening statement.

“Which means we can rush on over to another club and play the later slot there. What?” Micky said when they stared. “Groups do. Play a set on the Strip then another in the Valley the same night.”

“Yeah, we’ll have the tour bus standing by with the engine running.” Mike patted his arm. “So all in favour of a week’s residency, or as long as it takes the Warm Embrace to get themselves a better lawyer, say—”

“Aye!” they chorused before he’d finished.

“Mr. Duke, let’s talk Monkee terms.” Mike bent down a considerable way to loop an arm around the club owner’s shoulders and steer him out, presumably to his office.

“Let’s get back out there.” Davy peered in the mirror, checking he hadn’t wiped off all his stage makeup with the towel he used to blot his sweat. “Before the best lookers get snapped up.”

“I’d settle for the second best,” Micky said.

“You _’ave_ to,” Davy claimed.

A little later, the club emptying, Peter hung around near the office. Paul Duke came out, but Mike didn’t. _Huh._ Peter didn’t like himself like this, wondering, guessing, trying to think one step ahead, but pressed closer to the door, widening the half inch it was open. Sure enough Mike was still in there, and on the phone, his back to the room, tapping his fingers in the way he did when he’d been kept waiting a while. Peter would have left, he really would, but Mike’s, deep, rough, “Honey,” rooted him to the spot.

“I no longer have any keepsakes of yours,” Mike said, his voice tight. He paused. “Oh, for God’s sake, keepsakes, souvenirs—what’s the goddamned difference? And fuck, I’ll curse if I wanna. I’m clueing you in.”

Peter pressed his ear to the opening, hoping no one saw him.

“Yeah, with a bad attitude. Sure, I agreed to this, but doesn’t mean I have to like it. I don’t want to do _any_ of this.”

The savage edge to Mike’s voice, as much as his words, had Peter stumbling away, his back bouncing off the wall and his head reeling. What didn’t Mike want to do? Finish with the guy and take back the keepsakes that he’d given him? So why did— _Because I forced him into it._ _But that means Mike wants me more than my rival, right?_ Except, Mike wasn’t happy about it. Peter’s heart weighed him down, making him slow to a stop. _Because, doesn’t that mean—_

His name being shouted caught his attention. Micky was waving him over to where tables were being put together by the few people left by now and, wow, Chinese food being taken from delivery bags and set out.

“Isn’t it great? It’s like I have magical powers.”

“What?” Peter often felt he missed at least half of what Micky was saying, and now the half he’d caught, he didn’t understand.

“I wanted Chinese food, and it’s here! I wanted pretty girls and…shazam!” Micky rubbed his hands, looking from Lola to Jo-Ann to the other girls whose names Peter wasn’t sure of.

“Where’s Paul Duke?” Peter wondered if the supper was some sort of impromptu celebration of their contract.

“Oh, he leaves us with the end-of-week clean-up. Which is when the food arrives. Coincidence, huh?” Lola answered, to a chorus of laughter and cheers, especially when she added that it came from the petty cash, that she was in charge of, and that this case of beer was surplus to requirments, so…

She had the management of the venue down to a fine art, Peter saw. No wonder the place had a mellow vibe and always seemed to get good write-ups by the press, a couple of whom, along with a couple of booking agents, were still there. Mike would like that. If he ever got off the phone. Waiting for him, Peter had to admit to being more emotionally confused than ever, with anger duking it out with sadness. He wasn’t sure which was winning.

 

That Peter was keeping his distance was evident to Mike. Was it to the others? He could hardly ask him, in the midst of all the socializing and schmoozing, with everyone jazzed, but once he got him home…

But the pad, when they eventually made it back there, seemed to have become the scene for some sort of Duke Box afterparty. At least, Lola, Jo-Ann, Leah, and another blonde had come back with them. _Least they brought their own beer._

“Peter,” he began as soon as he could get him relatively alone, in the kitchen, the music from the juke box covering his words.

But Peter marched back into the living room, skimming the bag of emergency pretzels he’d unearthed from its hiding place across at Davy. “I’m going for a swim,” he announced above the music.

“What?” Mike burst out.

“I haven’t been in the water all day,” Peter said as if that put a stop to all argument. Mike didn’t think so.

“That’s not a good idea.”

“Mike is now working out when Peter last ate and how much,” Micky narrated in the manner of a wildlife documentary commentator. “And how much he had to drink and subtracting that from his weight and height and—”

“Micky. Shut up a minute,” Mike begged. Peter’s face said he was getting his way. “You can’t go out alone in the dark. I’ll—”

“Micky’ll wait, won’t you?” Peter ask-told him.

“Sure. I’ll shine the lantern. Use it for semaphore. Don’t anyone razz me about my spelling,” Micky agreed.

“I’ll go with.”

Mike wasn’t the only one surprised by Lola’s offer, one Micky gladly accepted. Mike didn’t really get what was going on, not with Peter, or that Lola seemed to have traded Davy for Micky or that _that_ left Davy with Jo-Ann—who’d understood Mike wasn’t responsive – and Leah and Linda, all of whom were now deciding to take things outside, to the beach.

Anyway Mike was going to bed, leaving Davy to sort out the Math, or, he sniggered, the long and the short division.

“Oi.”

At Davy’s version of, “Hey,” Mike paused, one foot on the helter-skelter stairs.

“Whatever’s wrong with you and Peter, sort it out,” Davy said, his voice cool and level.

Mike didn’t turn to look at him, but nodded, heading to their room. His turn to lie and wait for Peter to return from the moonlit beach.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

But when Mike got there, the room was too quiet and too empty. Peter wasn’t a whirlwind, like Micky, who managed to occupy all the space he found himself in, and Mike had only been sharing a room with Peter for two days, but Mike missed him, missed the sense of him. Despite his tiredness, he thought he’d grab a real shower. It was late, sure—or early—to be using the downstairs bathroom, but he was sweaty and smoky from the club and seeing as everyone was out… Halfway through he realized he didn’t want to be caught bare-assed by anyone returning from the beach, especially any of the chicks, and so hurried to finish.

Peter seemed to take his own sweet time, though. Well, when didn’t he? Mike was just about asleep, despite having kept a lamp on, turned down low and angled away from the beds, which still had that gap down their middle. He hadn’t moved them together and secured them, not the way things stood between him and Peter. _Oh, what?_ Peter sauntering in, rolled towel slung around his neck, his skin still glimmering with water droplets, dressed in nothing but a pair of old, faded jeans? He even had the button undone and the damn zipper half open. Mike defied _anyone_ on the face of the planet to remain immune.

“I know you’re awake,” Peter stated without looking at him, crossing to the bathroom.

“So do I,” Mike returned, wrenching a half-grin from Peter.

Peter doing his teeth in their one-eighth bath meant he’d washed off under the beach shower, not downstairs. Mike didn’t think _he_ could have, in this night-time temperature. Again unfair, that Peter didn’t mind the cold. Well, he was from the north.

Peter glanced at the glass of water Mike had placed on his night stand for him. He sat on the edge of his bed and towelled his hair. It dried quickly, falling into place.

“So, did you clear your head?” Mike asked. Peter claimed the water did that, and of course Micky had quipped that was where Peter’s problems had started, on his arrival in LA.

“I’m not that good a swimmer.”

“Huh?”

“I think I’d have to swim to Catalina for that. I’m not that strong,” Peter clarified.

“Ha-ha.” Mike fidgeted, turning onto his side.

Peter copied him, facing him, lying on top of his sheets. “I have some theories I’d like to run by you.”

“Ok…ay.”

“They’re in the form of questions.”

“Go ahead.” Mike was just relieved Peter wasn’t mad, was talking.

“Wait.” Peter stood and shoved his bed up against Mike’s with a bump.

Mike was embarrassed at how much that gladdened him. Peter stripped off his jeans and went to the effort of folding them over the back of the chair before strolling back to bed and lying down again. He was much closer now and much more naked. Mike couldn’t resist gawping. He thought his tongue must be unfurling, like a goddamn cartoon character’s. “Sorry,” he mumbled, when Peter’s raised eyebrow told him he was busted.

“’S’okay.” Peter twisted, settling on his side. “Okay. Question One. Did you want me to come on to that chick, Maryann, so we’d get a good write up in her newspaper?”

“What? _No!_ ”

“Okay. Two. Do you think that by you coming on to women, you’re not queer?”

“ _No._ I mean, if I do, that’s not why I do it.” Mike tried to think around the question, difficult with Peter stretching like that, his biceps flexing. The mark on his hip peeped out from the sheet a little and wow, did Mike want to examine it, up close and personal.

“Go on,” Peter prompted, into the silence.

“Peter, I don’t know! If I like someone, I like them. Guy, chick, that’s not…” He finished in a lame shrug.

“Do you feel you have to alternate queer and hetero ‘encounters’ so you’re not fully queer?”

“I’m not gonna waste my breath on that one. I’m beginning to regret you spent so long in the water, had so much time to think.”

“Next line of inquiry.”

“Wait. I got it. This is how your pa speaks, right?” Peter’s father was a university professor, a fact that intrigued Mike. Well, the whole enchilada did, that Peter’s upbringing had been so different from his.

Peter gave a half-grin of acknowledgment. “Here goes. Is it that you’re into threesomes? Two guys, one chick?”

“For God’s sake!”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

Mike shifted into a half-sitting position. He needed the height advantage. “What are you trying to ask? If I was pushing for a threeway with you and that journalist woman? _Jesus_ , Pete! The answer’s no.” He wasn’t about to tell Peter about any threesomes he’d been a part of. “I couldn’t see myself sharing you. I’d be too jealous. Too possessive,” he added, meaning it. “I’d want you all to myself.” He mumbled the last sentence—well, it was a heavy confession.

“Last one.”

“Thank the Lord.”

“Do you separate the physical from the romantic? Is that why—”

“Peter.” Mike pinched the bridge of his nose. “Mind if I turn off the light? I think I might be getting a headache.” He stretched to hit the lamp’s switch and let the dark soothe him a little. “Your last question? I don’t even know what that means. Are you asking if I feel romantically and physically attracted toward you? Wait. I don’t know what _that_ means either.”

He lay down again, on his back this time, and hooked his arm over his face. “All I can say is what I said already. I dig you. God, so much. I want to be with you. In an intimate relationship with you. Physically. Romantically.” He tried to recall any more words Peter had used to describe things, to volley them back at him.

“I’m just trying to figure things out. Figure _you_ out.”

“Peter, as soon as I can, we’ll talk.”

“It might be too late.”

Mike uncovered his eyes. The light was dim, but he made out the shine in Peter’s eyes and the shape of his face, a paler patch in the half-dark of their room. “I know. That’s a risk I have to take. I don’t want to, but…”

“Grrr!” Peter thumped the bed. “You infuriate me, you know that?”

“I can see that.” He also saw Peter rising and looming over him. “Are you gonna take a swing at me now?” He held still when Peter dropped on top of him, a clenched fist to either side of Mike’s shoulders, his face close. Close enough to—

“Nuh-uh. You don’t get out of this that easily.” Peter shoved and wriggled and within seconds, had Mike moved over enough for Peter to lie by his side. He moved again, just a little, pushing bluntly, like a puppy, and just enough to be resting his head and torso on Mike’s chest. He swung his arm out to capture Mike’s far hand in his and Mike, startled, recovered and brought his free arm around Peter, hugging him as tightly as he could. When after a while Peter wiggled, Mike slackened his hold.

Mike bent his head to the top of Peter’s and inhaled his scent. _Apricot._ Peter’s shampoo had been activated by the water and although the aroma was faint, Mike had rarely been this close to it, and it was heady. When a tiny drop of wet landed on Mike’s chest, and Peter buried his face deeper, Mike knew Peter was crying. And if that didn’t twist a knife in Mike’s heart. He kissed the slightly damp head tucked under his chin and wondered if Peter could feel Mike’s answering tear too.

He cleared his throat. They couldn’t sleep, couldn’t lie there in that atmosphere. “So, babe, I guess this means sex is out of the question, huh?”

“Not until we know each other better.”

“Peter, we’ve known each other for years!”

Peter pulled his hand free and his elbows were sharp when he raised himself on Mike’s torso to look him in the face. “I don’t think I actually know you? So yeah, although I do want to lick my way down your body and learn how you feel, that will have to wait. As will taking your dick in my mouth to learn how you taste and see what you look like when I make you come, hard, down my throat. Oh, and that’s if I can: you’re way bigger than any other guy I’ve ever been with. I’d have to work on supressing my gag reflex.”

And with that, he settled back down again, tucking himself comfortable, his cheek nestled in Mike’s chest fuzz and one hand over Mike’s nipple.

“You… _you…_ ” Mike squirmed at the picture Peter had painted, ducking under every syllable Peter had fired like bullets. Every inch of Peter’s skin on his was now too warm and too much. “You did that on _purpose_!”

Peter shrugged, his hair tickling Mike’s skin where it brushed him like soft apricot satin. Positioned as Peter was, Mike couldn’t tell if the words had affected him too, if the image was searing its way into his brain. He felt Peter’s smile and, suspicious, raised a hand to touch his face. Yeah. That sweet dimple was at half-mast while the twist to his lips spelled _wicked_. 

The last thing Mike felt before he fell asleep was the warmth and weight in his arms and the last thing he smelled was apricot and a hint of ocean—the essence of Peter.

* * * *

 _Gon’ Surfin’_ said the note Mike woke up to later that morning. Huh. Peter could have woken him. But at least he’d put the coffee on, unless Mike was hallucinating the aroma. He was halfway down the stairs, trying to kickstart his brain and body by inhaling the scent, when he noticed the strange chick at the stove. It wasn’t until she turned around to answer the phone that he saw it was Lola. So that was what she looked like with her hair down straight, no high-heeled shoes and…wearing one of Micky’s shirts.

Seemed like yesterday, someone beating Mike to get the phone, only today the person answering it was the person who’d been calling it the day before. Like some sort of riddle or puzzle. One he needed coffee to fathom. Lola had said hello and recited their number before she saw him.

“ _Sorry,_ ” she mouthed. “ _Habit. Peter?_ ”

“Carry on,” he told her. “No. Out.”

“I’m afraid he’s not to be found on the premises,” Lola said.

Her ingrained business patter made Mike smile, as did her, “What message should I take?”

She stilled, frowning as she listened, then found the phone pad and pencil with easy efficiency. “I’ll ensure he gets it.”

“Sorry,” she repeated, addressing Mike, looking at her watch to write the time on the message she’d noted down.

“Not a problem.”

“And sorry for this.” She pointed at the counter, where the coffee she’d made had just stopped bubbling.

“Again, not a problem. It smells good.” And when Lola poured him out a cup, it was neither burned nor sludge. “Help yourself.”

“It’s not for me. I’m trying to wake Micky up.”

Mike guessed that meant Micky had won the right to the room last night.

“I need a ride home,” Lola continued. “So I thought coffee might wake him?”

“Well… If not, try the soda syphon.” Mike mimed spraying a stream of water.

Lola laughed. She poured herself a glass of water and glanced at Mike from the corners of her eyes. “That message…” she said. “It seems…”

Mike snatched it from the table and read it. From Maryann. _My boss wants to meet your supplier. We need to know source._ Oh, Christ on the cross! Heart sinking, he turned to Lola. “I know what this could look like.”

“So do I.”

She no doubt did, having seen it all in a nightclub. “It’s nothing like that. It’s _Peter_ we’re talking about!”

“Yeah.”

 But she didn’t really know Peter. “Him and that chick had some cockamamie joke going on. I guess she thought it’d be funny to leave a stupid message. Look, you can’t really think he’s _dealing_?”

“No. He’s not the type.” Lola poured a second cup of coffee. “And he wouldn’t be that stupid, not with her some sort of reporter. She writes for the free press that works out of that happening coffee shop, the Hear Say, on the Strip.”

“You know her?”

Lola shook her head. “She’s never been in before, and she didn’t look right, ya know? Wasn’t there to review the Warm Embrace for the entertainment section. So I asked around. She’s the daughter of Jack Robertson.”

“I…” Mike tried to stall.

“The Robertson family, as in the owners and publishers of the _Los Angeles Chronicle_? You’ve heard of that!”

“Of course!”

“I guess she’s trying to make her mark with the _LA_ _Free Times_ , show Daddy dear she’s worthy of a job on his precious paper, like her brothers and boy cousins get handed automatically.”

Mike had taken advantage of Lola’s shrewdness and reading of people yesterday. Now he regretted she was so sharp. Because that? Was dead on the nose. He worked hard not to react, not to give anything, least of all himself, away to the tiny but perceptive woman in front of him.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

“Life’s not fair,” he ventured.

“Not for women, no.”

“I’m sorry.” Mike thought fast. “Hey, Micky’s real tough to wake up. You’re welcome to hang out here, of course, but if you have to go, I’ll give you a ride. I have to go downtown anyway. Just gimme a minute to get presentable.”

Lola gestured at herself. “Give me ten. Yeah, I really gotta beat feet. Thanks.” She looked at the message, still in Mike’s hand.

“I’ll see Peter gets this.” Mike jerked his chin toward the upper floor, as if meaning he’d put the note in Peter’s room. “It’ll only get mislaid, leaving it here. Believe me.”

Lola looked around the mess and a half that was their huge communal room after an impromptu party, albeit a small one, and nodded.

“Oh and ya know, don’t mention it? To Mick or Davy, I mean. They’ll tease him.” Mike pocketed the note.

“Well, seeing as Micky’s dead to the world and Davy’s not here… He went back to Jo-Ann’s,” Lola explained.

Mike almost choked on his coffee. “ _Davy and Jo-Ann?_ ”

“Yeah. Guess she fancied a stroll on the short side of the street.”

It was so like what Mike had been thinking that he laughed. Lola was a groovy chick all right. Fun, smart, into music… Too good for Davy, the way that little skirt-chaser carried on. Micky had once observed it was no coincidence that Don Juan and Davy Jones had the same initials.

“Guess I should apologize for that chop. Take this as me saying sorry?” Lola cleared up some empty bottles from a table to deposit in the waste. She tidied away the bag of coffee she’d used and wiped down the counter in quick movements.

Yeah, she’d be good for Mick, or—Mike supposed—Peter. Under other circumstances. Well, for Mike too. For all she was too small for him. Small for Micky and Peter too. Mike shook his head. God, even his brain was rambling. No surprise really, coping with _this_. He scrunched the note smaller. What to do now? First things first. Get ready for the day.

“Bathroom’s through there, if you haven’t found it yet. Or, if you have, it’s still there,” he added, before she could smart-ass him. “Ten minutes, you said? I’ll believe that when I see it.” He needed to hustle her away before Peter got back.

She was ready in under ten minutes, strolling from the downstairs room, carrying what he supposed to be some makeup item or other.

“Say, d’you wanna leave Micky a note?” Mike gestured at the message pad and pencil. He wasn’t trying to push…

“Already did, thanks. You said bits of paper got lost here, so I wrote it on his chest.” Lola capped what he now saw was a marker pen and returned it to the All Sorts cupboard.

“That’s indelible pen!”

“Yeah. It said so on the side.”

Mike was still grinning, imagining Micky’s face when he saw his chest, _and_ the chest itself, when they set off. He liked Lola even more when she asked permission before she fiddled with the car radio to find a different station. They talked music, and she confessed to hating her childhood flamenco dance lessons and begging her brothers to teach her what they learned on Spanish guitar instead.

“That, and me being a DJ? Not what my parents wanted for their little Delores,” she lamented.

Mike felt stupid for not realizing Lola was anything but a given name, and guilty for getting rid of her as soon as possible, not walking her into the West Hollywood apartment she shared with a cousin. He needed to get to a phone, one where he could call the emergency number he had and wait for a call back. Hanging about for the contact and trying to ignore the pointed sighs and gestures of the couple of people in the line for the kiosk had him already on edge, so when it rang and Mike learned there was a plan in place for this, he snapped.

“So you _thought_ the job might not be over?” he growled. 

When the voice on the other end informed him this was standard, had been the case in any other job, Mike’s opinion of that turned the air blue and silenced the _tsks_ and taps on the glass of the people in line. Most of them melted away. But Mike couldn’t contain the emotions racing through him at the realization that just because he’d assumed an undertaking had finished, that didn’t mean it was so. He let anger power him rather than get himself lost in the what could have beens and the fact that he’d no doubt been under surveillance at times, without his knowledge.

“Oh, well, okay, I guess I can see that you renting yourself a room for the week in the same coffee shop as the _Free Times_ works out of is not that stupid an idea,” he admitted, calming down a little. “So now what?”

“We’re working on persuading the source of the information to speak to the press. The _Chronicle_ ,” the voice on the other end told him.

“But iffen he’s gonna do that, he could have done it from the off, making no need for all this cloak and dagger!” Mike yelped.

“The picture changes all the time, in these situations,” he was informed.

True, he guessed, trying to keep his cool, even when he promised Peter would be in the coffee house mid-afternoon to meet Maryann, who’d receive a message telling her Peter had called her back and set up the encounter.

“And by then you’ll know more?” Mike asked, closing his eyes at the thought of another risky attempt at distraction and passing over of documents or who the hell knew what. The answer didn’t reassure him, and he leaned against the phone when he hung up.

This was veering way beyond stupid. He had to tell Peter what was what. And if that meant Peter wanted nothing more to do with him, then…he couldn’t bear it. Talking of, time to move forward with that stage. He dialed again. “Hi there, big Pete,” he said stupidly, when Peter answered.

“Hey.”

Mike tried to read into that. Couldn’t. “I’m downtown. Just finished giving Lola a ride home.” _And bending the chronology a little._

“Yeah, I got your note.”

“Yeah?” The note Mike had left in their room, not the message Lola had noted down. That was in the garbage. “Well, I got yours first.” That got the slightest hint of a laugh.

“You really want to meet for lunch, hang out?”

“Yeah. I really do. We’re not working tonight, with the Duke Box closed.” Monday was the club’s mandated day of rest. He tried to make sense of the silence. “Peter, I wanna spend time with you. Get to know each other better.” He chose those words with deliberation, again volleying things Peter’d had said back at him. _And this must be how Judas felt._

“It’s getting on for lunchtime now.”

“Means you must be hungry. So, take my bike, get down here sooner rather than later?”

“Wow. You must _really_ want to see me.”

“Always,” Mike muttered. It was true. “And, hey, I lend all of you my bike. Well, not Micky. He’s too distracted for her. And yeah, okay, not Davy. He’s too short for her.”

“I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times you’ve let me borrow her.”

“Then be prepared to see another finger sprout on your hand there, shotgun. Will that make playing the bass easier, or harder? Guess we’ll see. Come on, ’cause I’m buying, if you haul ass.”

“ _Haul_ _ass_? So you expect me to put out for lunch? Because I’m assuming _haul_ ass is what you call—”

“Peter, please! Don’t make me think about your ass or anything to do with it!”

“I thought you liked my ass?” came in a too-smooth baritone.

“I do! I just can’t cope with dealing with a boner in public. Not right now.”

Peter’s deep laugh was still echoing in Mike’s memory as he strolled from the car to the café they’d arranged to meet at, one Mike had pushed for, it being close enough to the Hear Say that they could stroll there after. It meant the place wasn’t any of Mike’s preferred burger or ribs joints, but some organic, wholefood place. It was only a matter of time before Peter turned fully vegetarian, and Mike of course supported that decision, as inconvenient as it would be for their daily communal meals. Peter’s wishes came first.

He found another call box to check things again on the way to the café but even so was there before Peter, not surprisingly. He pointed at Peter when he came into view. “Oh my God. The brown plaid pants—is this a test?”

Peter’s wide-eyed look didn’t fool him in the least. “What? I just thought they made my ass look good.”

“Pete, _everything_ makes your ass look good. Or your ass looks good in everything.”

“You know, seems that’s my cue to make a pun about things looking good in—”

“ _Please_ don’t.” Mike pinched the bridge of his nose. “Come on. Let’s get you a salad with mixed nuts in it. And _don’t_ sass on that.” He held the door of the Whole Earth for Peter to go in first.

“Hmm. Holding the door, paying for lunch…is this a date?” Peter murmured.

“Hardly. No tablecloths.” Mike indicated the raw wood tables and generally hippie mismatched bits o’stuff décor.

“Huh?”

“I thought that was the rule? A meal isn’t a date unless there’s tablecloths?”

“Texas…must be an interesting place,” Peter mused.

“Hey, when I take you out on a date, you’ll know,” Mike promised. “And it won’t be to no self-service dive!”

Peter deserved more, and Mike just hoped Peter would allow him to give it, give anything, once he knew. _He’ll understand_ , Mike hoped. But he wished he’d thought to explain, been able to explain, before Peter and he became, well, more than friends, was one way of putting it. Had he really forgotten, in the heat of the moment? Or…just wanted to?

“Huh? Oh.” He’d missed the question but could guess. “Whatever you suggest. Whatever’s left.”

They were a little late for lunch, and things were delayed further by Peter greeting the servers and a young brunette congratulating him—them—on yesterday’s gig. She hadn’t been but had heard… Word travelled fast along Sunset. Peter sat opposite Mike at the corner table and placed his tray down.

“Mick surfaced yet?” Mike asked.

Peter’s brow scrunched as he unloaded his tray. “I think I heard him in the bathroom. Well, a sort of shout? Yell? I didn’t think it wise to ask.”

Mike rested a foot against Peter’s, safe under the table, and explained that Micky had probably just discovered a message left for him. On his person.

“Oh!” Peter trapped Mike’s foot between his. “Do you think Lola wrote it backward, so he could read it in the mirror?”

Mike almost squirted whatever floral cordial he was drinking down his nose, he laughed so much. “She _is_ thoughtful,” he agreed.

“I thought she liked Davy,” Peter said.

“She did.” Mike forced some of whatever the red vegetable was down and tried not to think what a great garnish it would make on a huge medium-rare cheeseburger. “Until she realized the lyrics to ‘Here Comes Tomorrow’ were about him and the Harrison twins—and that _Davy_ never realized.”

“What? Neither did I!” Peter exclaimed. “I just thought it was about his approach to women in general. I mean, he really lives those lyrics, both when he’s singing them or going about his life.”

“I know, man! He never suspected the lyrics are sarcastic!” Mike had never understood that. “Thinks they’re a lament, or something.”

“A blues story,” Pete replied, and they were off, riffing on a theme, like they did with their instruments, when they were getting some music down.

Afterward was just as bittersweet too, with Mike nudging them in the direction they needed to go in. Peter browsed in a second-hand bookshop that wasn’t his usual haunt, but even so, he knew someone there. “Are you in a hurry?” he asked, catching Mike looking at his watch.

“Oh, no. Just, thinking I’d like a coffee.” Mike gave a quick nod. “Wanna check out that place along here? They’ve got lots of leaflets and pamphlets about stuff. Petitions to sign. You like that.”

“Hmm.” But Peter nevertheless followed him to the Hear Say, glancing back behind them a couple of times.

And the first person they saw when they entered, standing on the raised half-mezzanine that hugged the back wall, taking a break from the office downstairs, was Maryann, who waved at Peter and came straight for him.

“Mike? What’s going on?” Peter’s hand, where it caught his arm, landed hard and his voice, asking the question, rang with cold suspicion.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

“Oh, what is this ‘what’s going— Nothing!” Mike thought as fast as he could.

“You knew Maryann was here.” Peter didn’t make it a question. It came out as a dead-cert accusation.

“Well, yeah. I just thought you could, you know, spend a little bit of time with her?”

“Mike.” Peter’s tone cut through Mike. “If you’ve changed your mind, don’t want me, and this is your way of softening the blow, setting me up with someone else? Basically, passing me on to someone else? Then—”

“No! Nothing like that! I want you.” Mike put his hand over Peter’s, not caring about discretion. “Please, Pete. Visit with her. Sit a spell. I have to go…make a phone call, anyway. Please.”

Maryann spied an empty table and sat, beckoning to Peter and frowning at Mike.

“Go get some coffee. Some herbal tea. Whatever. Just kinda chat to her. Keep the conversation going, just…” Mike had no idea what to say, how to instruct Peter.

Peter searched Mike’s face. “And you can’t tell me why, or find a way to explain things.”

“I… Peter, I have to think about that. It’s not easy.”

“I suggest you think fast.” Peter moved forward, toward the woman, his swerve knocking his shoulder hard into Mike. “ _Really_ fast. Because when I do understand what’s going on, and I will, and sooner than you think, it might be that this, this right here? This was your last chance.”

_Fuck. This is bad. And not the assignment._ Mike hesitated only long enough to cast an eye around the warren of a place, getting his bearings. He saw Peter make his way to Maryann’s table and bend down to talk to her, presumably asking her what he could get her to drink. Self-service, so Peter would be backtracking to the long counter near the entrance.

Mike walked slowly and as discreetly as he could down the couple of steps at the end of the mezzanine to the door there, the office space taken for a few days by some bogus organization or other.

He opened the door a crack and peered in. Yep, right place. He took a step inside toward the guy behind the table. “ _Honey._ ”

“ _Nez._ ”

And, God in heaven, the reply came not from the man in front of him. but from behind Mike, and in a deep, smooth baritone that Mike knew so well, so intimately. It was mocking and angry now, and at the same time, the door behind him burst fully open, the force propelling Mike forward, slamming his hands onto the desk to save himself from falling.

But that wasn’t what scared Mike. What stopped his heart was the guy in front of him leaping to his feet, his hand going to his shoulder holster in an instinctive defensive action.

“ _No!_ ” Mike flew across the table to grab at the man’s hand, hoping like hell he was quick enough to stop him going for his piece. “Do _not_ draw your weapon! Stand down. Stand the fuck down, now. It’s _Peter_!” He glared until the man nodded, the light glinting off the lenses of his glasses. Mike released him and waited until his contact lowered his hands to his sides.

“But…” Peter’s voice wasn’t so assured now. “ _Honeywell?_ That fucking off-the-wall CIS snap case? You’re involved with _him_?”

Shaking at how close a call that had been, Mike moved to shut the door. If anything had happened to Peter, Honeywell wouldn’t still be standing, no matter what the consequences to Mike. Mike faced Peter, even though he dreaded what he’d see, what Peter would say or do when Mike confessed.

“I’m not ‘involved’ with him. I’m _working_ for him.”

“What?” Peter’s face turned ashen, and Mike knocked a chair toward him before Peter’s knees gave out. _Jesus._ His face showed too many emotions to catalog, but two Mike caught were incredulity and horror. If there was anything Mike could have done to avoid this, to rewind, to unmake it, he would have. _Anything_. But now he’d started, he had to get it all out, whatever that did to himandPeter.

“Not just me. We all are. Just you three don’t know it.”

“ _What?_ ”

Peter sat mute; this had come from Honeywell. Mike’s anger at himself and his stupidity erupted in the savage kick he gave to the table, one that sent it skidding across the small room. It also removed any barrier between any of them. _No place to run to, nowhere to hide._

“They didn’t know. Not none of them.” Mike stepped up to Honeywell. He’d gotten to know him, to support him, even to admire what the man was doing—hell; even to like him—but none of that stopped Mike hardening his tone with steel now. “But that makes no difference. Does it?”

“No,” Honeywell replied after a pause. “But this isn’t finished yet.” He glanced at the phone, still intact despite Mike’s rough treatment of the table on which it rested.

“I have to explain.” Mike stared at Peter, but his words were for Honeywell.

“ _Now?_ If you do that _now_ , at this point, it will complicate things.”

He almost wanted to laugh at that. “It will? Future tense? Things already are. Peter…” What the hell could he say? He swung back to Honeywell. “But it still stands, what we arranged—when this is finished? And then there’s just me left. Right?”

Honeywell paused again and nodded.

“Michael, I don’t even _know_ you. What are you? Some sort of nark? A fink? A _spook_?” Peter’s laugh was short-lived and bitter.

Mike opened his mouth to answer, but closed it when the phone rang, the shrill tone complementing the vibe in the room.

“Not a word!” cautioned Honeywell, picking up the receiver. He barely spoke and the conversation finished within seconds. He replaced the receiver. “He’ll speak. The source. Meaning this job needs finishing.”

“So I’ll finish it,” Mike vowed. “Brief me.”

“Brief— Listen to you!” Peter stood, rounding on Mike. He was still pale and a little shaken-looking. He glared at the third man in the room. “Can he do that?”

Honeywell shrugged. “It will look off, odd, in the reports. I can’t guarantee it’ll count as—”

“So fake them,” Mike ordered.

“For God’s sake!” Peter rarely raised his voice, and his doing so now shook Mike. He addressed Honeywell. “Tell me what to do. What I’m doing. At least now I’ll know.”

“Peter!”

“ _Tell me_ ,” Peter ordered Honeywell, ignoring Mike.

Honeywell took a quick look at Mike, then motioned Peter to the table. “Fine.” He took a photograph from a file and wrote a few numbers on the back in thick black pen, blotting that on a sheet of paper. “Source and his flight arrival time at Burbank. Hand this over.”

“Peter, let me.”

“You have lost the right to tell me what to do.” Peter articulated each word with dreadful clarity.

Mike tried to stare him down, but couldn’t. He dropped his gaze. “Be careful. Cover it with your jacket, then put it in a book or a magazine to hide it and leave it on the table or a chair for her to pick up after you’ve got up and gone,” he muttered.

“Huh. Tips from the expert.” In anyone else, that would have been called a sneer, and Mike hated that he’d made Peter act in this way. With a final glare, Peter left the room and Mike stared at the door Peter closed behind him, everything in him aching to go after Peter, to take his place.

“I had no idea.”

Mike turned at John Honeywell’s softly spoken words. John was staring at the door too, and he shifted his gaze from it to Mike, his meaning plain. He took off his glasses to look at Mike. He said nothing more, but the way he gazed at Mike, the expression on his face, the dying of the light in his eyes… _Oh, God_. “I…I had no idea, either,” Mike replied, to that look, to that understanding. He swallowed, hoping it was true. Had he known? Or at least suspected John had…

“Oh well. Hope springs infernal, eh?” Honeywell rubbed his eyes and replaced his glasses.

“Hey.” Mike waited until he got the man’s attention. “I’m sorry. For how I spoke on the phone. You didn’t deserve that. Me taking it out on you. My…irritation.”

“Irritation?” Honeywell scoffed. “Try temper. Rudeness? Fury?”

“Hey. That’s enough. And for the record, you ain’t never seen me furious, and I hope you never do. It ain’t pretty. Here.” Mike indicated Honeywell take one end of the table while he got the far end, to right it. “Sorry for this, too,” he muttered. “Just…sorry.”

“It’s not me you should… Okay.” Honeywell mimed zipping his lips, and they waited in silence until the door opened again and Peter returned.

“I slid it into this week’s copy of the _Free Times_ and left it on the table in the middle of a handful of pamphlets and flyers when I bought her a peppermint tea,” he announced. “We talked about a few of the events and debates advertised and I told her this week’s _FreeT_ was a good issue, very informative.”

“And she…”

“She scooped up everything off the table and took it all with her cup of tea back to her office, saying her father was interested,” Peter answered Honeywell.

“So it’s over?” Mike broke in.

“Your part. I’ll be here for a couple days.” And the crazy loon held out his arms, then dropped them “So no dancing yet.” He _was_ off the wall. Why he’d joined the CIS in the first place Mike would never know.

“And I picked up a couple of passengers.” Peter knocked on the door at his back and an answering _rat-tat_ came. The door opened a crack and two figures inched in. They were dressed like beach kids, surf rats, right down to the hats, but very recognizable to Mike. He stepped in front of the agent in case he had any idea about going for his sidearm again.

“You were behaving so weird that I asked Micky and Davy to follow us from the café you said we’d be lunching at,” Peter explained. “Now I know why you were—”

“Always pleased to take part in a caper.” Micky pointed at Honeywell. “But _that_ ding-a-ling?”

“Hey, Micky.” Honeywell shook his hand. “See those cracked ribs healed well. Davy. Nice to see you again.”

“Erm…” Davy looked at Mike and Peter. “What’s—”

“Oh yeah. Mike’s a tool of the establishment. A lackey of government.” Peter raised his voice to be heard over the other two’s exclamations and questions.

 “No! It’s not like that! Honeywell is working against the man,” Mike tried to explain, locking the door.

“Like a traitor?” Peter spat.

“No, not—”

“Well, it’s _technically_ treason,” Honeywell broke in, placing one side of a pair of headphones over one ear and starting a tape recorder.  Mike guessed he’d bugged Maryann’s office.

“When we got involved before, it was a legitimate CIS case, foreign threats to security, yeah. But this…he came across some stuff he couldn’t stomach, wants to get it to the public. It has to be stopped. Believe me.”

“I can’t believe you, and I have no reason to trust you.” Peter almost turned his back on Mike, now aiming his words at Honeywell. “And we don’t know if we can trust you, so you’d better explain. Now.”

“Hold up. We’ll have to sign the Official Secrets Act first,” said Davy.

“That’s Britain, Davy.” Honeywell smiled, getting them chairs. “This comes under Title 18 of the United States Code. Well, I’d offer you all a drink, if I had any, except most of you aren’t old enough.”

“Old enough to serve their country. To die for their country. But not old enough to drink.” Mike couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Just explain. Like you told me. And you all listen up—” He ignored Peter’s rude noise. “Then see what you think.”


	18. Chapter Eighteen

He listened with his band mates, his roommates, his three best friends, as the man explained, describing the small group of agents, some very high up in the hierarchy, who were as disgusted as him at not just this operation but the bigger one they’d learned about, the CIS’s mind-control-research program that had begun a decade and a half ago. As Mike had expected, even a mention of the latter brought exclamations of disbelief. It did sound like something from a really bad movie. He just hoped Micky didn’t start riffing on it.

But no, the three fell silent as Honeywell continued. And when he detailed what he’d accidentally discovered about the program to study the effects of drugs on unconsenting individuals, the silence was as thick as though they’d stopped breathing.

It had shocked even Mike, someone naturally suspicious and distrusting of authority. He listened again, that the project had started with agency-payroll prostitutes luring clients to the safehouses where they were plied with drugs and monitored through two-way mirrors and hidden cameras, and progressed to dosing unsuspecting people in restaurants, bars and on beaches, all so the government could understand and refine the possible use of mind-altering drugs in field operations. And to hear it anew was as hard as it had been originally.

When Honeywell described how ‘harassment substances’ considered too dangerous to test in New York were trialled here in California, including their delivery systems, such as glass ampules stepped on to release hallucinogens into crowds at concerts and gatherings in San Francisco, Peter exclaimed out loud.

Micky shifted in his chair. “Pete, I gotta say, consuming a load of drugs at a festival or beach party sounds like the kinda thing you groove on.”

“With consent.” Peter stared at Mike. “An innocent person forced into something without their knowledge—that’s plain despicable. Agent Honeywell, I appreciate your candour.”

 _And he’s sounding like his father again._ Just as Mike slipped back into the idioms and intonation of his youth, under stress. Mike was not looking forward to what Peter had to say next.

“I suppose I understand your reasons for coming to question the organization, for no longer thinking the ends used for protecting the country justify the means—”

“You want to know the incident that convinced me?” Honeywell sounded a long way from the bumbling man they’d met a year ago. “It was a joint Central Intelligence Services-Army ‘field study.’ They developed a pathogen, a strong bacterium, a biological weapon, at an Army Medical Command installation and, when enlisted soldiers refused to be their guinea pigs any longer, the Department of Defense tested it on conscientious objectors. Didn’t tell them what it was, or what they were doing. Just did it. No warning. Then covert monitoring after, to see the effects, the illnesses they contracted.

“And actually, what else did it for me was their next stage of the experiment.” Honeywell looked around at his listeners, three seated and one standing. “When they released it into New York subway tunnels to test it as a biological agent on a population. And how did I know? The NY office got a memo warning them not to take the subway that day, so they wouldn’t be exposed to it, unlike thousands of civilians.”

“So he had to get this out with no comeback on him. So he’s still in place,” Mike added.

Peter closed his eyes and opened them again. “I guess I’d have done the same.”  

Micky nodded and Davy made noises of agreement. “How did you get involved, Mike?” Micky added.

Mike knew Micky would have been the most curious, the one to ask the questions, but before he could answer, Peter stood.

“That’s not important. What matters is he got _us_ involved. Yes, me on this and you two presumably on other things. Without our knowledge or consent.”

“No, he wouldn’t—”

“Mike?”

“Not here. This is a private matter.” Peter spoke over the others. “So let’s go back to the pad and hear what Mike has to say for himself. What excuses he has to offer.” He dug in his pocket and Mike struggled to catch the keys tossed to him. “You can take your bike. I want to go with Davy and Micky.”

“Even with them dressed like that?” Mike attempted some levity. It fell flat.

“Mike?”

He wanted to duck from the look on Mickey’s face. Confusion and disappointment and—

“At home, Micky.” Peter almost pushed them to the door. “If it’s not bugged?” He threw over his shoulder.

Honeywell shook his head.

“Peter, please. Not like this,” Mike said.

“The pad. You talk and we’ll listen. That’s all I can guarantee.”

Mike hoped, just hoped, that the door shutting, with the other three on one side and him the other wasn’t an omen. He held up a warning hand to tell Honeywell not to talk, except to assure Mike once again that what he’d promised, the chits Mike had, would all be honored.

* * * *

When he got back, he stared at the other three checking the edges of pictures and art work on the walls, and even behind and under them, plus feeling underneath tables and ledges and patting objects. When Micky, his finger marking a page in a stupid spy story he was reading, fetched every transistor radio in the pad and retuned them to off-station white noise and placed them all around the room, Mike shook his head.

“Honeywell promised me again the pad is not bugged or monitored in any way,” he said. He’d asked the agent again and worded the question carefully.

Peter shot him a thin-lipped look, and Mike saw red. “You got grief with me, instead of getting the others on your side to condemn me, how about we air this right now?” he said, fighting to keep his voice level.

“That’s what we’re here for.” Peter sat at the kitchen table, indicating Mickey and Davy should join him.

“Why were you faking us out?” Davy asked, at the same time Micky enquired, “How d’you get so tight with Honeywell?”

“Because of the dancing.” Micky’s was an easier question. Mike kinda wanted to smile.

“Huh?”

“After the case, with Boris,” he added. “We were all dancing. All that danger and tension, and when it was over, we danced.”

“And you slow-danced with him,” Micky remembered.

Mike nodded, considering. That must have been when Honeywell had…taken to him. “He _liked_ us.”

It had been that simple. Their vibe, the fun, mutually caring and affectionate music-filled optimism that carried them through their days, that got them into and out of crazy adventures, that threw them into and skated them out of risky situations—it had resonated with Honeywell. He’d fallen for them. “He liked us,” Mike repeated, still standing. He hadn’t been asked to sit.

“You got talking, when they kept you in the hospital with your concussion?”

Mike nodded at Peter’s question.

“They wouldn’t let us stay with you. But he did.”

“And I had two cracked ribs!” Micky burst in.

Davy groaned. “We know, Mick. You never let us forget. Mainly when you don’t want to do something and they ‘hurt’. I always thought it was clever how Mike got them to pay our hospital bills, not get it on our insurance.”

“And it’s true what I said, that we’d be paying more premium this year if we’d had those hospital charges on last year’s,” Mike reminded them.

“So he stayed with you, not to make sure you didn’t babble to nurses or anyone when you had concussion, but to talk to you?”

Mike hadn’t known that was what the agent had told the others, but he nodded at Peter. “He was already, I don’t know, not totally thrilled with some of what the CIS was doing. Some of their agenda. Seems being with us, even for that little bit, made him question stuff.”

“He was always unglued,” Micky commented.

“No. There’s more.” Peter glared.

Mike sat, to one side of Peter, who’d taken the head of the table. “More, how?” Mike asked him.

“If you wanted to help him, why not just go and do so? Why secretly? And why get us secretly tangled up in it? What…were you getting in return?”

“What were _we_ getting,” Mike corrected, not answering Micky and Davy demanding to know what the three of them had been doing without knowing. “What _are_ we getting. A downgrade on our eligibility for the draft.”

A thick, fat, heavy silence greeted that.

“Woah, woah, woah!” Micky held up his hands. “You mean, in exchange for working for Uncle Sam, we don’t have to…work for Uncle Sam? _Not get conscripted?_ ”

“Not get drafted.” Mike nodded. “I guess how we all got our feet wet taking Boris down gave me the idea. Plus it gave us creds. So I got assurances. Records. The next job equalled one member granted 1-H. That means—”

“Registrant not currently subject to processing for induction or alternative service.” Peter didn’t even blink, keeping his eyes fixed on Mike. “Go on.”

“That’s Davy.” Mike’s head pounded with how they were all speaking or yelling at once. He had to raise his voice. “Then next assignment. Class 4-F. Not qualified for service in the Armed Forces by a Military Entrance Processing Station under the established physical standards. Micky.”

“The original ninety-nine-pound weakling, that’s me,” Micky said, his voice devoid of its usual energy.

“And you won’t be called up for any alternatives,” Mike assured him. “And now this. 1-H as well. Peter.”

“Why? What did he do?” Micky wondered. “And what did _I_ do?”

“Answer him,” Peter ordered.

“Well, Pete caused a copy of a classified report, oh, and details about the source, to be passed to Maryann Robertson, a journalist for the _LA Free Times_ underground newspaper, who’s the daughter of the owner of the _Los Angeles Chronicle_. Through her, they’ll break the story Honeywell told you about.”

“And he didn’t know?” Micky wouldn’t leave that point alone.

“No. She was just told to well, spend time with the blond one, a cut-out.”

“A cut-out… That’s in here!” Micky leafed through the spy book he’d laid on the table. “It’s an intermediary for transmitting information from one side to another.”

“Except they know what they’re doing, and I didn’t!”

“Hey, Pete, calm down.” Micky glanced around the table, his face showing his alarm at Peter’s reaction.

“When were you going to tell us? Tell us something as big as that we won’t get drafted?” Peter asked, his voice too controlled.

“Well, I was going to when all four of us were in the clear.” Mike tensed, not liking Peter’s reaction, but he was too late to prevent Peter springing from his chair and onto Mike, knocking him backward, still seated, crashing him to the floor. As Mike rolled free of the chair and raised his head, Peter’s fist met it, knocking it back again to hit the cold floor with an audible _crunch_.

“ _Peter!_ ” Micky shot to his feet, to be pulled back by Davy.

“Mick, no. Let Pete work this out,” he counselled, tugging Micky from the line of fire.

“You mean let them work it out?”

“No. Pete,” Davy told him. “But yeah, Mike has his own things to work out too.”

Mike struggled, but his position prevented him fighting his way free from Peter’s onslaught. Oh, Peter didn’t hit him again. He didn’t need to: his eyes blazed cold-burning fire and his words hurt more than the knock on the head, although Mike’s head was still ringing from its thuds against the floor. “Peter, I understand you’re angry,” he tried.

“You have _no idea_.” Peter still had him pinned down and now jerked him up and slammed him down again. “I hate that you used me. I hate that you didn’t us tell about the draft. And I hate that I did that!”

He moved away an inch, as if in apology for his act of violence, but didn’t back off. “I hate that _you_ did that, that you behaved like that. That you lied to us and deceived us – didn’t you think we’d have done our part? But no. With you it’s all, I know best, so do it my way, isn’t it? You treat us like children! You think you’re responsible for us? Don’t you see it was wrong? That you were wrong?”

Mike managed to get his arms free and knocked Peter’s hands from his shoulders, allowing him to sit. “I see that now. I see I have no right to make decisions for anyone else but me.”

“And if you had to do it all over again, I bet you’d do it exactly the same.”

“No,” Mike whispered, his lips dry. “I didn’t do it right the first time. I shouldn’t have done things that way. Look, let me up so we can talk.”

“Yes. We need to talk.” Peter backed off and stood. “And so I’m calling a meeting. To which you’re not invited. Because we’re going to discuss your actions. Your behaviour. _You._ ”

“You…you should go wash off the blood.” Micky hovered.

Peter examined his knuckles.

“Not you. Him.” Micky pointed at Mike.

Mike got to his feet and touched his eyebrow and the back of his head. Both sets of fingertips came away red. Peter stood flanked by Micky and Davy, and Mike wanted to drop his gaze. But he didn’t. He looked them in their faces. “I…I’m so sorry.” He swallowed. “I’m sorrier than I have words for. I thought I was doing… Well. Don’t much matter what I thought. I’d better go shower. I’ll agree to any decision you make, of course.”

And with that he trudged first to get clean clothes, then for the bathroom, wondering where he’d go if he couldn’t call the pad his home any longer.


	19. Chapter Nineteen

“We can have the meeting here at the kitchen table. And you don’t need to get the meeting-record book,” Peter called after Micky, when Micky got up.

“I’m not.” Micky opened the icebox and twisted a tray of ice cubes he yanked out, loosening them to tip them onto a tea towel. “I’m getting this for you.”

Peter had almost forgotten that his hand hurt. His heart hurt worse. Even after all Mike had done, all the pain he’d caused, watching those slow, defeated footsteps walk away from the table—Peter having done that to Mike was the worst feeling ever. Like a knife twisting slowly in his guts. His chest. His heart, he supposed. He held out his hand for Mick to wrap the makeshift icepack around it, half-nodding at Micky’s prattle about it being a good thing they didn’t have a gig tonight.

“Man, I had no idea you could do that!” Mick imitated a prize fighter. “Where d’you learn that?”

“Micky, I have two brothers. Of course I know how to fight! I mean, I love them, but growing up?”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t have brothers.”

“Me neither.” Davy joined in, tying the towel more securely around Peter.

Peter considered them. Their group. Their unit. Their, well, _family_ unit. Davy had no brothers. Micky neither. Davy had no mother, and Micky no father. Davy was far from his father, far from home. Mike—Peter forced himself to think about him—had grown up without a father, had been the father in his family from a young age. Peter…tended to make himself families. In his small Connecticut town, of course, but at college too, and in the Village. And here in Beechwood, and downtown. People to look out for him, to care for him—people he looked out for and cared for in turn.

What needs had the four of them identified and met in one another, in forming their modern family, their literal group, the way they had? Was that good? Healthy? Bad? Unhealthy? He had no idea. He laid his head down on the table, next to his mummified hand. After a while, Davy rubbed his back. Peter knew it was Davy because Micky slid to the floor and wriggled himself between Peter and the table, sliding up a sheet of kitchen roll to his face. Peter raised his head, dislodging Davy.

“Oh.” Micky stood, awkward, waving the paper square around like a flag.

“I’m not crying. I cried last night. I’m too angry to cry now.”

“So you were…sad, last night?”

“And angry too. But yeah, more sad than angry.”

“And now you’re the opposite. I see.”

Peter could see Micky didn’t. Why would he? He slid to the floor to sit under the table, cross-legged, tugging at Davy and Micky’s silly-looking boardshorts to get them to sit with him. “What I am is feeling used.”

Davy tried to get comfy. “Think we all are.”

“Yeah.” Micky tried to fold his long legs. His legs were almost as long as M— “Mike had no right to do that. It’s just like you said when you were, er—”

“Smashing his head into the floor until it bled.”

“Thanks, babe. Little graphic, there…” Micky made a face at Davy. “Like Pete said, Mike always thinks he knows best. He’s always, ‘I’ll take care of the hotdogs and you bring the orange drink.’ Right?”

“True.”

“But?” Peter’s radar worked—he could feel the word coming. Easy when it was blasting at him in stereo, from the pair of them.

Davy bit his lip. “What he did? Had us do—whatever it was? It’s still better than the alternative.”

“Well, yeah. I gotta agree.”

Peter waited, wondering if Micky would go off into some fantasy. The war? Espionage? But no.

“He thought he was doing the right thing, man,” Micky continued. “And maybe he’s learned and he’ll see now that that _wasn’t_ the right thing. Wasn’t the best way to do or to approach things. But wow, now I think I about it? Is it crazy that I feel guilty that I’m not gonna be called up when friends, cousins, people I know, are?”

Peter nodded. That weighed on him, the moral dilemma. “We should have had the right to decide that!” Would he have chosen to take his chances? He’d never know now. “Mike spared us the draft and the decision,” he muttered, more to himself than the others. “He treats us like kids. And the assignments could have gone wrong. Been dangerous. We had the right to know. To say yes or no.”

Micky and Davy exchanged glances. Seemed Davy lost. “Peter. What’s really wrong, underneath all that?”

“It’s personal.”

“ _We’re_ personal.” Davy’s tone was pointed. He was a stubborn SOB.

“Okay. You want to know? I feel deceived and used. Like I don’t know him, and that’s making me feel sick because…”

Davy nodded encouragement. Even held Peter’s hand. His good hand. Peter raised his head.

“Because we became intimate. More than friends,” he added, to clear up the frown on Micky’s face.

“ _Lovers_ , Mick.” Davy pointed at Peter, then his new upstairs room, then Micky, then the downstairs room. “Join the dots yourself. Just don’t make me draw you a picture.”

“You…and Mike…you’re having _sex_? You’re in a sexual relationship?” Micky’s voice was small.

Peter nodded, hoping Micky was as okay with it as Davy seemed to be. Davy had guessed from that first afternoon, and had known Peter’s feelings before. Too much to hope that Micky knew Mike’s. _When Mike doesn’t seem to know Mike’s._ “And a romantic one, I thought. But he lied to me and used me, just so I’d do what he wanted, as cover for this mission.”

Now his eyes prickled and he rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, to push the tears back, almost dislodging the icepack. He caught the tail end of a look passed between the other two, saw two vertical lines appearing between Micky’s eyebrows.

“That’s not…that can’t be right.” Micky’s frown spread, deepened. “Because Mike—”

“Was acting weird and when I asked, again and again, why all the dodging around, he let me think he was seeing someone else at the same time as he’d started a relationship with me. And, _Jesus_ , that hurt. That we’d taken things further and all the time he was involved with someone else?”

“How can it hurt if it’s not true?”

“Micky, just me thinking it, him letting me think he’d treat me like that, made me behave like that? And now knowing he lied and hurt me…” He looked from Micky to Davy. “He came on to other people to act as his cover and made me do the same. Sort of. And I can’t trust him and I don’t know him and how could he treat me like that?” Once he’d started, it all flowed, disjointed, structureless.

Davy re-checked the knot holding the ice pack on. He was always better at practical help. “Go on?”

“He sees me as a liability. That’s why he did all this on his own and didn’t say anything.” Peter had plumbed the depths of despair and now wallowed in them.

“Babe, he sees us _all_ as liabilities,” Micky pointed out.

“And with me being last, like this? What does that mean? He thinks the least of me?” The depths were bottomless, it seemed.

“I bet _he_ couldn’t choose who did what. And if it was up to _them_ , they left you to last to have more leverage over him.” Micky’s face wore its crafty look.

“Or, if Mike could choose, you went last because he’s had more practice, got better at it now. Meaning he knows what he’s about, and you’d be more safe.” Davy looked satisfied at his take on it.

“Oh yeah! And hey, you know, with Mike’s experience and your knack, and my knowledge from research—”

“Paperbacks and movies?”

Micky ignored Davy “We could do more! Have our own unit for assignments! Take on cases and missions, like agents on TV.”

“Yeah, Mick. The way you carried on about your cracked ribs after your first case, you could be in the _Man Who Cried Uncle_.” Davy rolled his eyes.

Micky subsided. “Or maybe it’s just whoever fits the job. Like whatever we two did was because of our strengths or skills, and maybe…this Maryann chick digs on blonds, for instance, so she’d want to hang out with you. Or digs bassists, or multi-instrumentalists…”

“I appreciate you trying,” Peter told him, after a pause.

“Or…it had to be someone good at conversation. Talking about things.” Davy took over. “I mean, I can chat up birds and Mick can entertain them—”

“Whaddya mean?” Micky broke in.

“Who was that supposed to be—never mind.” Davy shook his head at Micky. “But, Pete, you’re good with people.”

“Well, I was still the last,” Peter said, a dog with a bitter grudge of a bone.

 “No, you’re not. Mike is. He’s still not safe. He put himself last.” Micky reminded them.

_And that’s just one of the reasons I love him_ , Peter thought, just as Davy said, “Pete, he loves you.”

“We all love you.” Micky glared.

_Oh, Jeez. Of all the times to be jealous…_ For a drummer, Micky had lousy timing.

“We all love one another, but you and Mike don’t just love each other, like we all do—you’re _in_ love. He’s in love with you—”

“—like you are with him. Yeah,” Micky finished for Davy.

Those words seemed to hover, then fall all around the three of them, to settle. Peter looked at his friends. They were silent now, waiting for him. “I don’t know…if I can trust him,” he muttered. “I told him, in the coffee bar, when he wouldn’t explain what was going on, that that was his last chance.”

“This was bad, and he knows that now,” Davy judged.

“And, oh God, I hit him! He’ll never forgive that.”

“You know how I know, even if I didn’t know, how I absolutely know now, that he loves you?”

Peter shook his head _no_ at Micky.

“He didn’t hit back. Not a bit. He was angry, furious, but he didn’t even defend himself.” Micky looked smug.

“And he could’ve,” Davy added.

“He could’ve killed me,” Peter acknowledged, a tiny smile finding its way to his lips.

“I thought you were gonna kill him,” Davy admitted.

“So did I.” Peter shivered.

“Well, you know, being a couple is hard.  No one said it was easy.” Micky spoke as if with the voice of experience, when he’d probably read that in a cartoon strip in the daily paper.

“And you are a couple. Even when you weren’t.”

“Even when you didn’t know it,” Micky added to Davy’s words.

“If we are—and that’s a big _if_ and I’m _not_ saying we are—I kind of pushed him into him. Forced him.” It cost a lot to admit, but it weighed on Peter.

“Mate.” Davy shook his head, a look of pity in his eyes. “When has Mike _ever_ been forced into anything?”

True, but…

“Is it so hard to understand that the two of you have been in a relationship for ages?” Davy sat back, as much as the cramped space allowed. “You think about that. And think about life without Mike.”

“Or us—if we got drafted,” Micky muttered.

Peter ignored that. He did as Davy ordered, bowing his head to imagine. To see. Scenes of him and Mike, them playing music, writing music, talking about music and books and films and the future and everything under the sun. Together at gigs, in clubs, on the beach, in the pad. And that was just the everyday, never mind them kissing, on the sundeck, and even more, caressing, in their bed, with the promise of more yet, of _everything,_ unrolling into the future. And a future without Michael in it? _No. Not possible. Not liveable._ Mike was far from perfect, but weren’t they all works in progress? Growing, evolving?

And who Peter wanted to grow and evolve, to stretch into the future with, was Michael.

He looked up and a slow smile spread across his face.

“Go on.” Davy indicated the bathroom.

“And you’re…okay about it?” Peter tried to ask Micky, without putting things into words.

“Go on,” Micky repeated the words and the gesture, even if the smile on his face wasn’t quite his usual one.

So Peter, not knowing what he’d say or do when he got there, went.


	20. Chapter Twenty

The bathroom door opened and Mike forced himself to straighten up, to stop leaning his head against the wall. _Damn._ He should have locked the door, but none of them tended to. He heard the door fine because the shower was only running at a trickle, just enough to provide an excuse for any water on his face. And thank God he had his back to the room. The other person didn’t speak, leaving it up to him.

“If…” He cleared his throat and started again. “If this is to tell me to leave, I just need a few more minutes.” Which didn’t sound pathetic at all, did it?

He jumped when a hand reached over his shoulder and turned off the water. Not just _a_ hand, of course. Mike knew those long, slender yet strong fingers, those flexible wrists, that freckle-dotted tan skin. Knew them well, from years of watching Peter play music on stage, or sports on the beach, or games in the pad, and more recently, in a closer, more personal way. It took him a deep breath to be able to turn and face Peter now.

Peter’s face was unreadable, his posture almost four-square. And Mike was naked, dripping wet and more vulnerable than he’d ever been in his life. He searched Peter’s face but gained no clues. “Do you want me to go?”

“Do you want to go?” Peter batted back, his tone giving nothing away either.

He’d been premature: _this_ was the most vulnerable he’d ever been. “No. No, Peter.” He shoved his wet hair from his eye. “I don’t.” And of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy, not with Peter remaining silent. “I want to stay. Here. With you.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why do I want to— Because you’re my world, Peter! I need you like I need the sun and the air—I’m cold without you. I can’t breathe without you. You’re _everything_. I love you and I’m in love with you. Have been for such a long time.” When Peter went to speak again, Mike jumped right on in again. “And if you ask why to that…I don’t know where to start. All I can say at this moment is that I just…know.”

And if meeting Peter’s eyes without looking away was one of the hardest things Mike had ever done, not flinching when Peter reached past him wasn’t easy either.

“Finish your shower.” Peter turned the water back on.

Mike had to turn his back to hide the tears in his eyes, and couldn’t excuse himself for that rudeness because they were choking his throat. He turned the water higher, louder, and pressed his palms over his eye sockets, leaning his forehead against the wall again, not thinking, not imagining life without the pad, without the group…without Peter.

And when a warm, naked body pressed against his back, his heart tried to leap from his chest and he had to clap a hand over his mouth to stifle the cry wanting to leap free with his heart.

“Turn around.”

Mike shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You’d better.”

So he did as that deeper than usual baritone ordered, hanging his head, but Peter got a steady hand to his nape and held Mike’s head to his chest, just as his other arm, warm and strong, held Mike to him. Peter rocked him under the soft spray of water, making soothing, nonsense noises, and while Mike cried it all out, Peter rubbed Mike’s back and tucked Mike’s head under his chin. Peter’s body, his presence, was so solid and so _there_. As if had always been. Would always be, if God loved Mike.

Mike sniffed to a stop. “I… I thought I’d lost you,” came his shaky admission, his confession. His nightmare.

“So did I.” Peter raised Mike’s head, bringing them face-to-face. “And if you ever do anything like that again, you will, and the others too.”

“I know,” Mike whispered. “I know, Pete.” He dashed any remaining water from his face. “Please. Give me another chance. I’m begging you. I’ll get down on my knees for you.”

The smile that pulled at one side of Peter’s mouth was far from angelic. “That’s a promising start,” he murmured. “I’d like that.” And he thrust, ever so slightly, against Mike.

“ _Peter!_ ” Mike pulled away, because even said in jest, those words, the image they brought in their wake… And putting a gap between them, showed him the bruise on Peter’s hip. The mark Mike had put there. It looked glorious, even more so when Peter touched it, looking Mike in the eye as he did so. He even licked his bottom lip, just a tiny flick of his tongue, and Mike wanted to order him do that again.

“You should know one thing.” Peter, wise, brave, honest Peter, stared hard at him. “How it would hurt me so much to lose you. Because of how much I love you.”

“ _Peter._ ” It was all Mike could manage, and it fell far short of conveying even half of what he felt. _And Jesus, what an inconvenient time to get hard._ He laid his forehead against Peter’s.

“And—I’m informed—I’m in love with you.”

“Well, that’s…” Mike’s voice shook too much to continue. He’d hurt the person he loved—the pain he’d felt thinking he’d lost that person, well, that was his punishment. His due. He’d accepted his fate. And now, back with Peter, being with Peter, the person who loved Mike as much he loved him—Mike let it sink in and all he could do was smile. Wide. Keeping his lower half at a safe distance, he finished his sentence by leaning forward and planting a kiss on the tip of Peter’s nose and had the pleasure of watching Peter bite back a giggle.

“If you’re staying—”

“ _I am_ ,” Mike vowed, cursing himself for interrupting.

“Then this is it from now on. We’re us. We. MichaelandPeter us. Not just Mike and Pete or even MikeandPete us.”

“There’s a difference?”

Peter raised an eyebrow. There was no need to answer that, and Mike knew it. Knew Peter knew it too, as he stood there, waiting for them to begin again. A beginning Mike hadn’t thought he’d get. His eyes prickled again and he span around.

“Don’t look.”

“Michael, I cry all the time,” came Peter’s voice from behind him.

“You’re _you_.” Best he could manage.

“And you’re what, the fearless leader?”

“Something like that.” Mike let Peter take his shoulders and turn him back again.

“Not all the time,” Peter whispered, his deep voice audible above the hiss of the water.

“I know. I mean, I’m beginning to see that.”

“That it’s okay to let others take the lead, let them take care of you, once in a while? Because we do. And we care about you, for you, all the time.”

Mike stuck a finger into Peter’s dimple. “Now you’re just rubbing it in, shotgun.” The dimple flexing under his touch with Peter’s sly grin told Mike he was right. Not that Mike didn’t deserve the flick of pain.

“Because you need to hear it. Come here.” Peter angled Mike’s head under the spray, inclining it. “I’m sorry I did this.” He pressed a kiss into Mike’s hair, and Mike realised Peter was getting the blood out of it. “Let me—”

“No.” Mike reached for the soap before Peter’s fingers got there. “No, Peter. Let _me_.” He lathered his hands and spread foam over Peter’s shoulders and chest before Peter could argue.

Peter wriggled when Mike stroked lather down his ribs. “Is this supposed to be an act of supplicancy?”

“You and your big words.” Mike rubbed his thumbs around Peter’s nipples, loving the shivers this provoked. “And, nah. An act of fantasy. I’ve thought about this for so long,” he admitted. “Please. Let me learn how you feel, darlin’.”

And Peter let him indulge, let him know the wet-naked feel of Peter, so different to how naked Peter had felt the other night, even when sweaty from the pleasure Mike had brought him. The fine hair on Peter’s legs, for instance, which he’d learned the other night grew coarser the higher it went, clumped and darkened when wet. Mike knew that from the beach. Now he knew it felt heavier to the touch and colder, despite the heat of the water and the room. Peter’s chest hair whorled with the water, seeming longer and more apparent, fascinating Mike.

Peter even let Mike wash his hair for him, closing his eyes when Mike scratched his nails into Peter’s scalp. The moan Peter gave when Mike massaged his temples was a sound he’d never forget, just as he’d always remember the scent of apricot. Mike knew the smell, of course. He’d uncapped and sniffed Peter’s shampoo times without number. But the aroma given off as Mike worked the liquid into Peter’s silky hair was something else.

And every touch Mike gave got them both harder and more eager for the other until they could no longer pretend they were doing anything but rubbing up against each other, their long, lazy caresses becoming increasingly shorter and harder strokes, just as their kisses went from a languorous succession of nibbles to nonstop presses, to bold forays into and desperate seizings of the other’s mouth.  

Mike slowed things down. He didn’t want them getting off like that. Not now. Not even when Peter’s eyes were darker and hazy with arousal, gone from syrup to molasses, and his eyelids heavy, “I love your body,” he murmured, moving in before Peter could protest the sudden lack of contact. Mike swiped his thumb over the head of Peter’s cock as he worked his fingers through Peter’s darkened pubic hair, cupping his balls and finding them heavy and full with arousal.

He couldn’t resist bringing up his other hand to Peter’s hip, to finger the mark he’d made. When that wasn’t enough, he bent low to get his mouth to it. The shiver Peter gave emboldened Mike and he sank to his knees. “Told ya I would,” he said. “Peter, I know you want to take care of me and I want you to, but let me do this for you. Please.”

Peter blinked. “Never had anyone beg to suck my cock before.”

“Let me?” Mike repeated, fisting Peter’s length slowly, relishing the slick heat he found. Or made, he wasn’t sure. Peter’s cock stood rigid and just looking at it made Mike’s mouth water. When Mike pressed his face close, he could still breathe in the scent of Peter, even over the soap, and his stomach clenched in reaction. He licked the head of Peter’s cock and stopped at the low noise Peter made and the buck of his hips.

“Jesus, Peter. Look at you,” Mike marvelled. “You’re leaking so much I’ll get a good swallow of you right away. I fuckin’ love that. Love that I’ve done that.” He also loved the red tinge washing over Peter’s face at Mike’s words. Peter was eager and ready, but not so experienced. _Perfect combination._ “Here. Move a little so you can lean against the wall.”

Before his partner could make any quips about Mike being very sure of himself and his abilities, Mike engulfed Peter, swallowing him down, letting the blunt tip of Peter’s dick bump the back of his throat. Peter stumbled, bracing his shoulders against the wall, trapping Mike in between him and it. He widened his stance. Mike sucked, not as hard as he was planning to, and Peter struck one hand flat against the tiles in front of him and tangled the other in Mike’s hair.

“That’s so good,” he breathed.

Mike looked up to see Peter’s face, but it was the heated pleasure in Peter’s eyes that spurred him on. Mike raked his teeth along the underside of Peter’s length, making Peter lurch forward a little. When Peter held himself still, Mike understood. He pulled his mouth free. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Fuck my mouth, Peter.”

Part of him felt dirty saying these words to Peter, joyous, innocent-seeming Peter, but when Peter inhaled a noisy breath and rocked his hips, forcing his length in and out of Mike’s mouth, Mike knew he’d called it right. He grabbed Peter’s waist and held on, pressing one hand into the bruise he’d adorned Peter’s flesh with. He moaned at the pace Peter set. Peter was big, and this was punishing, making Mike’s jaw ache. And he loved every thrust of those hips and every moan he pulled from his partner.

“Fuck— Mike…I—” Whatever Peter was trying to say came out fractured and when he tried to slow his movements, to pull out, Mike wouldn’t let him, holding him firm, splaying his fingers into the flesh of Peter’s ass cheeks to keep him there. Peter rammed his cock hard into Mike’s mouth once, twice, and curled over him, his body tense. Mike understood the changed weight and feel of Peter on his tongue a second before Peter shot down his throat, hot and sweet, the flood almost too much to swallow.

He held tight so Peter would know it was okay to pump his hips a few more times, to let Mike milk him. Peter stuttered to a still, pulling his spent, softened cock free. “ _Michael._ ” His legs shook and he collapsed to his knees. Mike threw his arms around him, holding him when Peter’s hands grasped his shoulders and his head fell into the crook of Mike’s neck.

“ _Fuck, Michael,_ ” Peter panted in Mike’s ear, the ruffle of breath and the words themselves arousing Mike to the point of pain.

But for Peter, he’d bear it. Bear anything. “I know,” he murmured.


	21. Chapter Twenty-One

“You’ve wrung me out,” Peter confessed, his voice shaky. “Drained me dry. I’ve never…”

“Yeah?” Mike had to cough to speak. “Well, you just about fucked my throat raw there, shotgun. Seems a fair trade.”

“Seriously, that was…” Peter shook his head, trying to get his legs to work. “I don’t know if I can stand!”

“What? When we’re just getting started?”

Peter eyed Mike. Specifically, his boner. “Oh. Need somewhere to plant that flag, soldier?”

“You offering?” Mike shot back.

“I can take care of it for you. Not… But—”

 _Yeah. All in good time._ Peter was too good to rush. As much as Mike burned to take him right there, right then, shove him hard against the wall and fuck him real low-down and dirty, he needed and wanted to take his time. He planned to make Peter’s first experience so good and so sweet, make him come so hard and so much and so long that he’d be addicted to Mike’s brand of loving, be _begging_ for more.

And damn, if the image of a horny Peter, unable to keep his hands—or other parts—off Mike and vocal in his demands to fuck and be fucked every which way morning, noon and night, was…unrealistic. _But so very hot._ And in the meantime, Mike would take anything he could get.

“I know.” He aimed another tiny kiss at Peter, this one landing on the bridge of his nose. On a freckle, Mike thought. Wincing at the cricks in his knees when he straightened, he sat, supporting his back against the wall, and helped Peter to sit next to him.

“So, gonna lend me a hand here?” Mike gave a rub to his straining cock, tiding it over.

“C’mere.” Peter shifted, getting into position and curled a hand around the back of Mike’s neck to kiss him, sweet and slow. “Well, there’s room enough for two, there,” he mused, wrapping his other hand below Mike’s, making Mike inhale between his teeth.

The corresponding exhalation soon became a gasp as Peter learned how Mike liked to be touched, the best pressure, the perfect pace. And damn, he was a quick learner, getting Mike to arch into his hand, stifling a groan, within a minute. Peter’s hand was soon slick, especially when he thumbed the head of Mike’s cock, his touch sure. And _practiced_ , Mike recognized, intrigued, melting at the edges with the pleasure Peter was bringing him.

He almost protested when Peter stopped kissing him, but it was to nibble at the side of Mike’s neck, mouthing and tonguing, and smirking when Mike’s squirms almost jerked his cock free of Peter’s fist. He sucked into Mike’s neck, deceptively slowly, and the building sensation took Mike to the edge, leaving him strung-tight and aching.

Peter’s next move was to bite, bruise-hard, on that magic spot behind Mike’s ear he’d discovered before, and that plus Peter’s clever pressure on the sensitive, nerve-rich band just below the head of Mike’s cock had Mike jerking high and quick, with hot, tight waves of pleasure spiraling out from the base of his spine, making him thrust in Peter’s hand until he pulsed, hot and hard and helpless.

He panted, getting his heart rate down to normal, leaning into Peter much as Peter had into him minutes earlier. Peter examined his fingers and palm, coated in Mike’s cum, and when Mike could move again, he held Peter’s hand up to the still-trickling shower to wash it. He nuzzled into Peter’s neck in thanks, and it elicited a snuffled giggle from Peter.

“Up.” Mike jerked his chin up, indicating they should stand. He forced his legs to obey his brain. “Can’t be much hot water left.” He nudged Peter with his shoulder, encouraging him to slump against the wall, for Mike to remove the showerhead from its rest and hose them both down. He turned Peter and rinsed his lean, toned back and the sweet slopes of his ass. When he held the flow of water to Peter’s cleft and sluiced there, Peter reacted.

“You did there,” he reminded Mike.

“I know. Just rinsing again. Don’t wanna be tasting soap later.”

Peter turned, and the blush on his face delighted Mike. “You’re so beautiful,” burst from him. He covered it up by turning off the water and replacing the showerhead.

“Mike, I…”

“Peter, I know you haven’t. And I also know you’ll love it. I can tell.” He handed Peter a towel.

“You like it.”

Mike grabbed a towel for himself and nodded at Peter’s not-quite-a-statement.

“Does it hurt.”

It came out flat, a careful not-a-question.

“Yeah, it hurts like a bitch the first time and then the first coupla times. But I’ll make it gentle for ya. Hey!”

He tried to dodge the wet snap of Peter’s towel on his thighs. “And when you haven’t gotten any there for a while, you tighten back up and it can feel like the first time again. And even when you’re taking it on the regular, it’s… _Jesus_ , you feel it. And that’s a big part of it.”

Peter looked a little startled. “I thought you’d be describing it from the pitcher, not the catcher, perspective.”

Mike reached for his clothes. “Oh, I love fucking. Don’t get me wrong. I love every inch of tight wet heat. Love fucking a chick hard and fast and a guy long and slow. But when you’re in the mood, when you’re horny to get fucked there…then, taking a dick in the ass? There’s nothing like it. _Nothing._ You come harder with a cock up your ass than you ever did before.”

“That’s…outta sight.”

“Yeah. It’s intense.” Mike stretched to button Peter’s shirt for him. “Emotionally too. But physically…you know what the prostate is, right?”

“I guess so. From Health Ed and medical exams.”

Mike smiled, towelling at his hair. “Well, it’ll be my pleasure to introduce you to a new use for it, up close and personal. I know,” he continued, when Peter went to interrupt. “You wanna pitch too. And Peter, you’re big. Playing catch for you? That’d be a pleasure and a privilege _and_ a challenge. And you know me—I never back down from a challenge.” Combing product through his hair, he eyed Peter in the mirror.

“What if I don’t like it.”

Mike shrugged. “Then we do something else. There’s plenty to try.”

“I’ve tried some,” was Peter’s attempt to assert himself.

“And did you like it?” Mike plugged in the hairdryer, knowing the answer.

“Oh yeah.”

He smirked. Couldn’t help it. Then laughed at the face Peter made at him in the mirror. He dried his hair in record time, turning the dryer around to flick the heat across Peter’s smooth, shining halo that barely needed it.

“Don’t you go thinking you’re always right.”

“Hey.” Mike tipped up a mutinous Peter’s chin. “I don’t. I won’t. Okay?”

After a second, Peter nodded and turned for the door. “We’d better split.”

“Yeah. Gotta face the others.”

Who were standing right there, outside the door.

“Micky, Davy, I am so sorry.” Mike reached out to put a hand on their upper arms. “I really am.”

“How sorry?” Micky demanded. “Like, doing my chores for a month sorry?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Micky sank back a little.

“I guess you know, but just to say it.” Mike looked from Micky to Davy and slotted his hand into Peter’s. “We’re together.”

Davy scoffed. “You always were. You just didn’t know it.”

“But—”

“But nothing, Micky.” Peter stroked Micky’s cheek “You need me, I’m here.”

“ _We’re_ here,” Mike corrected, wondering what—

“Oooh.”

Mike…wasn’t sure he liked the _I’m thinking_ look on Mick’s face.

“And, Mike?” Davy tilted his head back. “You hurt him—”

“And I’ll be sorry,” Peter finished.

“Ha. He’ll be more.” Davy’s voice held certainty.

“I…guys… Is the power out?” Mike had only just noticed the semi-dark and tried to recall if they’d paid the last bill.

“No…ta-da!” Micky bent to press something and strings of Christmas lights, twined and twisted up the spiral banisters, lit up, tiny off-and-on multi-colored twinkles showing the way to Mike and Peter’s room. “Go on up,” he urged. “We fixed it up and made it nice for you, like in a movie. There’s champagne and rose petals and chocolate and strawberries.”

“And candles and soft music,” Davy added.

“And we’re going to Toby and Amanda’s. We called them and arranged it. Oh, just to get out, let you have some privacy. Not—”

“Hey,” Davy chastised him. “Never say never.”

“What excuse did you give for having to go stay at a neighbor’s?” Mike couldn’t help but be a little worried.

“Oh, I said there was a ghost here that someone must have summoned on accident. You know, groaning, rattling chains, a curse—everything.” Micky’s nod was proud.

Mike closed his eyes. “Ya gotta stop always choosing library books from the kids’ fiction section, man!”

“But the ghost is really a fake, right? Most probably Babbet, in a mask and costume, trying to get us out?”

“Peter!” Mike yelped. “Don’t encourage him!”

He shook his head as they walked in a small procession up the stairs. Imitating a drumroll, Micky opened the door with a flourish.

“We’ll take it from here, thanks.” Mike turned to the other two. “It sure looks pretty. You did a nice job, guys. Really, thanks.” He waited for Peter to stop hugging the kids, then ushered him in and shut and locked the door. He removed the key from the lock, too.

“Beds are together—that looks promising,” he commented. “I sure wouldn’t mind a drink of cham— Root beer?” He lifted the small glass bottle from his dressing table.

“With two straws,” Peter pointed out. “Romantic. And the rose petals?”

“Those are not…” Mike glared at the bits of green sprinkled on the beds. “They’re leaves off the birch tree on the sundeck, for cryin’ out loud!” He swept the ripped-up bits of leaves into the waste basket as best he could. “I don’t have the strength to see what the strawberries are… Ah.”

Peter held up a paper plate bearing an apple sliced in half.

“I don’t know why I’m bothering to ask, but the fancy chocolate?”

“Half a Butterfinger. _My_ Butterfinger!” Peter crinkled the opened yellow wrapper.

“Well, there are candles.” Novelty birthday candles, but… “And what is that syrupy music? On the Dansette? It’s rotting my teeth.”

Wordlessly, Peter held up the cover of the LP that was playing on the portable record player. It was yellow and the picture it bore familiar. It should be. They saw that face every day. He was probably still standing outside the door.

‘“ _David Jones’?_ ” Mike read in a whisper.

“ _This song’s called_ ‘ _Theme for a New Love’,_ ” Peter mouthed back.

They both held their hands over their mouths to hold in their guffaws, and shaking with silent laughter, Peter took the LP off.

“ _Jesus._ ” Mike’s lamentation was heartfelt. None of that had killed his libido, though. Despite having come not so long ago, he was getting hard again. He flung himself onto the double bed…and promptly fell through the gap that appeared when the two single beds it really was parted under him. “Damn it all to hell and back! There are three other people in this house and no one secured these beds? I have to do everything myself!”

“No, you don’t.”  Peter advanced on him. “Not from now on. We do things together. Here.” He helped Mike to sit, then heaved his mattress to the floor, landing it in front of the bed. Catching on, Mike helped him throw the second one to land by its side and the two of them flopped onto their new space.

“Oh, _there’s_ my baby oil.” Peter got to his knees and plucked up the bottle from the bed frame. He tossed it down beside Mike. “Huh. It must have rolled under the mattress.”

Mike paused. “But that…that was _Micky’s_ bed. Babe? What…”

“I can of course explain.” Peter slipped his now-unbuttoned shirt from his shoulders and started on his pants. “But do you really want me to talk or do you want to fuck me?”

The way Mike pounced on him and pinned him down made his preference clear. “I’d say tell me afterward.” he said, between kisses, “but after I’m through with you, you won’t be able to remember your own name, let alone be able to talk.”

“Challenge!” And Peter wriggled free and moved, enough to snatch the pen from his bedside table. He’d gotten as far as writing _PETER_ on the back of one hand and _T_ on the back of the other when Mike batted the pen across the room and pounced anew. He got Peter’s attention by licking his ear and nibbling his way to the top, then got Peter groaning by nipping the tip. Peter was just shivering in the most delicious way under him—

“What was that?” Mike froze.

“What?”

“That noise downstairs.” Mike sat, pointing at the door.

Peter sat to listen. “People arriving.”

“People and things and talking? It sounds like a small party gettin’ started! What in the world?” Mike glared at the sound of footsteps thudding up the stairs.

“Erm, guys?” Micky knocked, his rap as apologetic as his voice. “Ha. Funny thing. Little change of plan…” 

“A little change about _this_ big,” muttered Mike, holding his finger and thumb apart in lieu of forming his hand into a fist.

“So we left the message for Toby and Amanda and they got it and…they came here.”

“Wh—” was as far as Mike got.

“Yeah, it seems Amanda grew up in an old Elizabethan manor house, whatever that is, that was really haunted, and she kinda grew up to be a semi-pro ghost hunter? And she spent all Saturday buying American ghost-detecting equipment and all Sunday calibrating it? And she’s real curious to test it all out on her first American ghost, see how it all compares? Oh, and she’s not charging us for this?”

“But—” was as far as Peter got.

“And then Toby got an idea for a feature about documenting what the modern ghost hunter does and how she looks good while she’s doing it…so she’s here with a photographer and a case full of clothes and props, and lights and stuff? And so you two might wanna—”

“Or _not_ want to,” came from Davy. The noise below intensified, almost muffling the two steps of footsteps descending the stairs to join it.

“Gee, thanks, guys. Thanks a whole bunch,” Mike shouted in their wake.

Peter shook his head. “You didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you?” He threw a heated look at Mike’s groin and licked his lips. “Just like I didn’t think it was going to be this hard.”

“Oh my God. I must really love you—I even think that terrible joke is funny!” Mike yelped. “Well, come on, I guess.” He twitched the sheet from the bed they weren’t lying on.

“Huh?”

“One of us has gotta put on a sheet, climb onto the roof and make who-hoo noises or Micky will look an idiot.”

“ _Micky_ will look an idiot?” Peter grabbed the sheet from Mike and fluttered it over them, covering them. He rolled on top of Mike and pinned him down. “So this is a rain check? Due to unforeseen phantom and fashion circumstances? And it had better not be the first of many.”

“We are gonna get this done. Even if it means checking into a fancy hotel to do it,” Mike promised him. A hotel with a four-poster bed where he could chain a naked Peter’s wrists and ankles to each corner and not stop until his boyfriend was properly—or improperly—deflowered, breached, plundered, taken, despoiled, his cherry well and truly popped.

“Erm, you do realize I can see your fantasy?” Peter inquired.

“Sure do, babe.” Mike winked. “Any questions?”

“Yes, actually. Why is it always chains? Why never leather straps or silken bonds?”

“Oh, it will be, shotgun. It will be,” Mike promised. “You know, it’s been one helluva weekend.”

“I’ll say. Still, means next week can only be easier, right?”

At that, Mike guffawed and Peter howled with laughter, both of them until tears streamed down their faces. They rolled over and over, the sheet wrapping them tightly together. And if that wasn’t a metaphor for them, for their past and their present and their future, Mike didn’t know what was.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed it!  
> I have some ideas for the prequel story to this, before Mike and Peter got together, if that sounds of interest? (Just finding it harder to think of story ideas now they're happily ever after!)


End file.
